Tag Mapping

Tag policies are hard to enforce for two reasons:

  • You can create duplicate tags unintentionally when you make spelling, capitalization, and abbreviation errors, which makes it difficult to reconcile your monthly bill.
  • If your initial tagging structure is not well thought-out, you may have to modify it later, which can be time-consuming.

In CloudCheckr, you can create a unique tag key/value pair that won't conflict with the existing cloud provider tags and directs the costs from your incorrect tags into a new, more beneficial tagging structure.

The tags you create in CloudCheckr do not replace the existing cloud provider tags—they are in addition to them. CloudCheckr currently allows tags from Amazon Web Services (AWS), Azure, and Google Cloud Platform (GCP).

Procedures

As a first step, you must decide how you want CloudCheckr to apply the tags to your resources. You can use:

  • an OR statement if you want CloudCheckr to apply the tag mapping if a resource meets at least one of the conditions
    • or
  • an AND statement if you want CloudCheckr to only apply the tag mapping if a resource meets all the conditions

Click the links to learn more about how to configure each statement.

Let's say your company uses an Environment tag key with a tag value of Development. In a perfect world, all your AWS resources would be tagged with Environment | Development. However, you end up with resources tagged with the following variations:

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

Now, instead of keeping track of one tag, you must keep track of four tags.

In our use case, we will create the tag key/value pair, CC_Environment | Development, so we can funnel all the resources with the tag variations into one tag structure.

This procedure will show you how you to create an OR statement that will apply CC_Environment | Development if a resource meets at least one of the four conditions:

  1. Launch CloudCheckr.
  2. Select an account from your Accounts List page.
  3. Go to the left navigation pane and choose Cost > Tags (from Detailed Billing) > Tag Mapping.
  4. Set up the tagging structure:
    1. In the Map to Tag Key text field, type CC_Environment
    2. In the Map to Tag Value text field, type Development
    3. Click Create.

      CloudCheckr displays the new master tag key/value pair:

  5. Add the incorrect cost tags of the AWS resources that you want to map to the new master tag key/value pair:
    1. In the Tag Key to Map text field, type Environment
    2. In the Tag Value To Map text field, type Development
    3. Click Save.

      CloudCheckr now displays the first tag key/tag value pair.

  6. Repeat the previous step and add the remaining incorrect tag key/tag value pairs:
    • environment | development
    • Environment | Dev
    • Env | Dev

    CloudCheckr lists the four tag/key value pairs under Mappings:

Let's say your company wants the Finance Department to do a deeper cost analysis on all the resources in the development environments that are also labeled as Importance | High.

In our use case, we will use CC_Department | Finance as the tag mapping.

This procedure will show you how you to create an AND statement that will apply CC_Department | Finance if a resource meets both conditions of Environment | Development and Importance | High.

  1. Launch CloudCheckr.
  2. Select an account from your Accounts List page.
  3. Go to the left navigation pane and choose Cost > Tags (from Detailed Billing) > Tag Mapping.
  4. Set up the tagging structure:
    1. In the Map to Tag Key text field, type CC_Department
    2. In the Map to Tag Value text field, type Finance
    3. Click Create.

      CloudCheckr displays the new master tag key/value pair.

  5. In the Tag Key to Map text field, type Environment
  6. In the Tag Value To Map text field, type Development
  7. Click to add the final key/value pair.
  8. In the Tag Key to Map text field, type Importance
  9. In the Tag Value To Map text field, type High

    This is what your screen would like if you are creating an AND statement where all conditions must be met:

  10. Click Save.

    CloudCheckr lists the two tag key/value pairs under Mappings:

Add a Property

You can also add a property—an additional characteristic that allows you to further limit what costs are included in your AND or OR statements. For example, you can refine your tagging structure in your AWS accounts by applying one or more of the following properties:

  • Account
  • AvailabilityZone
  • Operation
  • Region
  • Resource
  • Service
  • UsageType
Let's say that you only want to tag costs associated with the US-EAST-1 region in your previous AND statement.

To add this property:

  1. Select Region from the first drop-down list and select us_east_1 from the second drop-down list.
  2. Click Save.

    CloudCheckr lists the two tag key/value pairs and includes the new property under Mappings:

Notes

When CloudCheckr processes your next monthly billing file, it will map costs that match the tag key/value pairs to your new tag structure. CloudCheckr will also display the master tag key/value pair in your cost reports.

Click Reload Billing Data to reprocess your billing report for any previous months where you want to apply your new tag structure.
Click Remove to delete a master tag. The deletion does not impact your cost data, but you must reprocess your billing report for these changes to take effect.
Click Upload CSV to create tag mappings in bulk using a CSV file.

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