Cost Categories in Cloud Management

Cost categories in Azure are associated with meter instances. Meters are used to track resource usage over time. Meter usage records are used to calculate your bill in Azure.

Each meter has classification categories, such as bandwidth, virtual machine license, etc. Each billing charge in Azure is associated with a meter, a category, and a meter subcategory. CCM uses these meters, categories, and sometimes subcategories to calculate costs.

For example, Data Transfer costs in CCM combine network costs from the meter categories bandwidth and virtual network.

Other cost categories for Azure include SQL Server License, Windows Server, and Unknown.

The cost category Unknown includes any costs that are not identified as Data Transfer, SQL Server License, Windows Server, or Reserved Instance.

AWS cost categories are based on patterns found in AWS reports. For Right Sizing and Cost vs Utilization, CCM uses the AWS Cost and Usage Report file. For Bill Analysis, CCM uses Cost Explorer.

Most categories are self-explanatory. However, two categories that warrant further explanation are Other and Unknown.

Other is an actual AWS category that includes costs for EBS Optimized, Elastic IP, and CPU Credits usage.

The cost category Unknown includes any cost categories that CCM does not associate with an AWS category.

See the Matching Conditions options in Cost vs Utilization Report Settings for lists of AWS cost categories. If modifications are needed to categories in Cloud Cost Management, contact Virtana Support.