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Create a Cost & Usage Report in AWS

You must configure a Cost & Usage Report (CUR) in AWS prior to configuring the AWS integration. This is required for all AWS integration configurations if you want bill analysis reports.

CURs publish your AWS billing reports once a day in CSV format to an S3 bucket that you own. Virtana Platform's Cloud Cost Management (CCM) uses these reports to analyze your resource costs and right-sizing needs. (Cost & Usage Reports replaced Detailed Billing in AWS.)

About This Task

If you already have a Cost & Usage Report that is properly configured with hourly billing, GZIP compression, and CSV file format for billing, then you can skip this task. However, if the CUR is not properly configured, CCM cannot interact correctly with AWS.

Steps

  1. Log in to your AWS Console for your management account.

  2. Navigate to Billing > Cost & Usage Reports.

  3. Click Create report.

    create-report

    The Report Content page displays.

  4. Name the report.

    Example: HourlyCSVWithResourceIDs

  5. Enable the Include resource IDs checkbox and click Next.

    enable-resource-ids
  6. Click Configure to choose (or create) an S3 bucket to store your files and click Next.

  7. Check "I have confirmed that this policy is correct" in the Verify Policy popup and click Save.

    save-s3-bucket

    The Delivery Options page displays.

  8. Provide a Report path prefix.

    Example: CostAndUsageReports

    Do not include any leading or trailing forward slashes. Doing so may distort the file hierarchy output by AWS.

    Tip

    Existing report path prefixes can be found by accessing the AWS Cost & Usage Reports and clicking a report name.

  9. Make a note of the Report path prefix as you will need it when configuring AWS in Virtana Platform.

  10. Select Hourly under Time granularity.

  11. Select your preferred Report versioning method.

    Overwriting the existing report might save on your storage costs in the future.

    Leave all data integration options unchecked.

  12. Select GZIP for Compression type and then click Next.

    final-steps
  13. Review your configurations and then select Review and Complete to create the Cost and Usage Report.

Tip

It can take up to 24 hours for data to populate in the S3 bucket. After that, AWS updates the data at least once a day.

Next Steps

Configure AWS using the CloudFormation Template method, the manual method, or the access key method.