Tags (From Detailed Billing)

CloudCheckr offers many reports which focus on tagging data from your detailed billing report (or DBR). These reports can help you keep track of your tagging conventions, set up rules to find improperly tagged resources, and keep track of which resources are associated with which tags. We currently offer the following Tag reports which take data from your DBR. 

Search Tags

The search tags report allows you to see the data associated with your tags. It will allow you to filter by any tag key, and then see resources associated with those keys.

Lookup Resources

This report allows you to see any tags associated with a given resource. All you need to do is to enter the Resource ID in to the search box.

Tagging Rules

The Tag Rules report allows you to more easily enforce your tagging policy across your AWS deployment. You can create rules that will ensure your running resources contain specific tag keys and values. CloudCheckr will run these rules against your AWS account and, within the Improperly Tagged Resources report, show you each resource that is not adhering to your rule(s).

From the left navigation pane, choose Cost > Tags (from Detailed Billing) to open the Tag Rules report.

To create a new rule, simply load the report and click the green + New Rule button on the right-side of the page.

The first step in creating tag rules is to give your rule a name. The name given to your rule will be used when reporting on the improperly tagged resources, so name it appropriately. Next, define your tag rules.

Tag Keys and Values

Each tag rule must have a tag key defined. You can only enter one tag key within the Tag Key text box. If you would like to create a rule that looks for multiple tag keys simply click Add another tag. You can enter one or more tag values into the Tag Values text box. Separate multiple values using a comma.

Example 1:

You can enter Environment as your tag key and Production as your tag value.

When CloudCheckr compares your resources versus this rule, any resource that does not have the Environment tag key will be flagged. Any resource that has Environment as its tag key and any other value other than Production as its value will be flagged.

Example 2:

You can enter Environment as your tag key and Production, QA, Development as your tag value.

When CloudCheckr compares your resources versus this rule, any resource that does not have the Environment tag key will be flagged. Any resource that has Environment as its tag key and any other value other than Production or QA or Development as its value will be flagged. Alternatively, you can check the Require Any Tag Value checkbox and CloudCheckr will only compare your resources against the tag key.

Rule Refinement

In addition to tag keys and values you can further refine your rules to look for specific resource types, and/or resources from specific AWS regions.

To refine your rules simply choose, from either the Region or Resource Type box, what resource type or location you would like to run your rule against.

You can click the binoculars icons to pull up the complete list of options. This will provide you with search capabilities on the lists and makes managing these lists easier. Once you have decided on your rule, click the Create Rule button at the bottom of the page.  You can add as many rules as you'd like to your account.

Improperly Tagged Resources

When CloudCheckr is processing updates to your detailed billing reports from Amazon, it will compare that data against your tag rules.  Any improperly tagged resources discovered will be listed within the Improperly Tagged Resources report within CloudCheckr.  Each time CloudCheckr gets an update from Amazon, it wipes out the Improperly Tagged Resources report and re-populates the report with the most up-to-date information.

To determine if a resource is improperly tagged, CloudCheckr will first compare the resources against the tag keys added to your rules. If a resource does not contain your tag key, that resource will be added to the Improperly Tagged Resources report. If a resource does contain your tag key, CloudCheckr will compare its tag values against those defined in your rule(s). If you only have one tag value in the rule, and the resource does not have that value it will be considered improperly tagged.

If you have multiple tag values within your rule, CloudCheckr will verify that the resource has one of the values. If it does not, it will be considered improperly tagged.

First you select which tag rule you would like to filter by. Alternatively you can search by any rule.

Next, select the resource types you wish to filter by. You can choose one, many, or all depending on your requirements.

When you have finished, click Filter to launch a report of all your reources that are missing tags.

It can take 6-12 hours after creating a new tag rule in order to process the detailed billing report. Until that has been completed you will not be able to see the improperly tagged resources associated with that new tag.

Tag Mapping

Tag Mapping in CloudCheckr allows AWS users to create their own payer cost tags using any existing tag key and value from their billing reports.

Among its many benefits is the ability to roll up cost assigned to multiple tags, reassign costs mistakenly assigned to the wrong resources, and create new tagging structures that were not created in AWS.

Our customers have had a few common complaints around utilizing cost tags in AWS.

First, tag policies are very hard to enforce. Even when you're able to get your AWS users to apply tags when launching resources, it's inevitable that someone will capitalize a key when they shouldn't, or they'll abbreviate ProductionintoProd.

While these variations are fairly innocuous in the day-to-day management of AWS, they can make reconciling your bill at the end of the month quite difficult.

The second concern we hear quite often is how difficult it is to change or modify an already-existing tag structure. Proper tag implementation is complex and requires careful planning. Often, tagging is implemented before customers fully understand how they want their tags structured. Adding or changing tags on hundreds or thousands of resources is time consuming and messy, but it’s necessary to organize the tags in a way so that costs can be properly attributed across an organization or a customer base.

Tag mapping alleviates these issues by letting you create the tag you want, and then funneling the costs from the malformed or outdated tags to the new tag.

Let’s say your company utilizes an Environment tag key with a tag value for Development.  Ideally your resources would be tagged with Environment | Development.

However, across your various AWS services you have resources tagged with a number of variations of that tag, including:

  • environment | development
  • Environment | Dev
  • Env | Dev

    • Now, instead of having one tag to keep track of, you have four. That’s where CloudCheckr’s tag mapping comes in.

    In CloudCheckr, click on the Setting menu and then on Tag Mapping.

    We need to setup our master tag. In the "Map to Tag Key" box you will enter Environment.  In the "Map to Tag Value" box you will enter Development.  Click Create. You have now created a master tag key/value pair.

    Now we populate the cost tags of the AWS resources we want funneled to this tag.  In the "Tag Key to Map" box we will enter environment.  In the "Tag Value To Map" box, we will enter Development.  Click Map Tag.  We will do the same for

  • Environment | Development
  • Environment | Dev
  • Env | Dev

    • We’ll follow the same steps to add any other account tags and the cost tags we want mapped to it.

    All of your changes and updates to this page are automatically saved.

    As CloudCheckr processes your detailed billing files, it will attempt to map any cost that matches the tag keys and tag values below into the values you’ve set here. When you setup a new tag mapping, CloudCheckr will have to go back through your historical detailed billing reports, so it may take time to reprocess that data.

    Please contact support by submitting a ticket via the CloudCheckr Service Desk Portal, if you are unsure if your files have been completely reprocessed.

    Mapping Tags

    Tag mappings can be created and managed within the Cost > AWS Billing menu of the report navigation.

    You can choose to either create your tag mappings directly within CloudCheckr, or you can create and upload a CSV into this screen. At the top of the report you will see two fields: one labeled "Map To Tag Key" and one labeled "Map to Tag Value".

    This is going to be a "Master Tag".

    The "Master Tag" is where the other tags will be mapped to. This is the tag that will display in your reports, that you will analyze costs against.

    Using the example from the Use Case above, we are going to enter Environment in the "Map to Tag Key" text box, and Development in the 'Map to Tag Value" text box.  Click Create to add this tag to CloudCheckr. Once the "Master Tag" is created you will see it added to the Tag Mapping screen.

    Under the "Master Tag" you will see two new text boxes; "Tag Key To Map" and "Tag Value To Map".

    This is where you will enter the already-existing tags whose costs we want to map this "Master Tag".

    Sticking with the Use Case outlined above, we will map three tags:

    • Environment | Development
    • Environment | Dev
    • Env | Dev
    Our initial tag mapping is created. 
    • Environment | Development
    • Environment | Dev
    • Env | Dev
    Now, all of our costs from any of these three tags will be funneled up to our Environment | Development tag in the CloudCheckr billing reports. All of your current mappings for a specific Master Tag will be listen on the bottom of the expand.
    Removing tags will not affect your billing data. You will need to re-process the data against your new configuration.

    Mapping a Property

    You also have the option to map a property to the tag key and value. All you need to do is select the appropriate bubble, select which property you wish to map to the tag and select Save. The drop down gives you the option to map various property types.

    You can create as many “Master Tags” and mappings as you’d like following the steps outlined above.

    You can also remove any “Master Tag” or mapped tag by clicking on the ‘Remove’ link to the right of that item you’d like to remove.

    Mapping Tags Using CSV Upload

    If you have a large list of tag mappings you would like to create within CloudCheckr, tag mappings can be bulk created via a CSV feed file. The concept is exactly the same as creating tag mappings within the CloudCheckr webapp.

    You need to populate four columns in the CSV:

    • Column A - Master Tag Key
    • Column B - Master Tag Value
    • Column C - Tag/Property Selector
    • Column D - Mapped Tag/Property Key
    • Column E - Mapped Tag/Property Value

    Using the use case described above, we want to create a “Master Tag” for Environment | Development.   In the CSV spreadsheet, we will populate column A with Environment and column B with Development.

    Next we will select our mapping type and add the mappings for our three cost tags.

    Those will each go into columns C, D, and E respectively. To select the tag mapping type, the value of column C must be false. To select the property mapping type, column C must be true. The properties available to map on are:

    • Account
    • AvailabilityZone
    • Operation
    • Region
    • Resource
    • Service
    • UsageType
    When adding multiple mappings to a "Master Tag" you don't need to populate Columns A and B for each row.  When those two columns are empty CloudCheckr will apply all tags within Columns C and D to the "Master Tag" above.

    To add a new "Master Tag" in the spreadsheet, just add the new Key and Value to Columns A and B.  In C and D add the new mappings you want to funnel to that "Master Tag".

    Once you have your spreadsheet created with the tags and mappings you want to implement, save the file as a CSV to your computer. Then, in the Tag Mappings page in CloudCheckr click the “Upload CSV” button and upload this file.

    Reload Billing Data

    When your tag mappings are configured, any newly processed billing data will funnel costs properly to the "Master Tags".

    would like your historic billing data to be mapped against your mapping configuration, CloudCheckr will have to re-process your previous months of data.You can force your data to reload at any time by clicking on the "Reload Billing Data" button at the top of the report.Depending on the size of your detailed billing reports, and the number of historic months to process, this reload may take several hours.

    Tag Mapping – Splitting

    In addition to standard Tag Mapping, CloudCheckr also offers the ability to use similar tag mappings to distribute cost proportional across multiple tags. This can be used to distribute costs across multiple projects (each designated with a unique tag), or to allocate costs as needed.In this report, you can create a Tag Mapping, then assign conditions to match records from your Detailed Billing Report. Finally, indicate how you would like to split those costs across multiple tag keys and tag values.

    Creating a Split and Adding a Condition

    Following our previous example when creating a Tag Mapping, we will create a splitting which focuses on distributing our cots between two tags, Environment | Production and Environment | Development. In this example we will name our mapping Environment. Enter the name and select Create. Now we need to add our conditions.

    Select the ‘Add Conditions’ Button. This will bring up the conditions dialogue box. Here we will add two conditions, one for Environment | Development and one for Environment | Production. You need to add these one at a time, saving each separately.Select save. Now we have added our conditions. The default logical operator for the cost splitting is 'And' this means that both of the conditions must be met for the mapping to occur. However, for the purposes of this example we are going to change the logical operator to 'Or' so that either Environment| Production or Environment| Development need to be present for the split to occur.Select the highlighted link beneath the conditions to change this. It will open a dialogue box.

    Select Save. The logical operator is now changed.

    Adding a Divisions

    After you have created your conditions, you need to create your divisions. The divisions will only apply if the conditions have been met, either one if you have the logical operator set to 'Or', or all if you have the logical operator set to 'And'. Select the 'Add Divisions' Button, which will bring up the divisions dialogue.Add the information for the first division, then select add another division to create the second. Once you have your conditions set, select save.Your conditions and divisions are now set. These conditions can be removed or the rule can be deleted at any time.
    Cost allocation should add up to 100%.

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