2020 enhancements

Review the BMC Helix Cloud Cost enhancements made available during 2021 for features that will benefit your organization and to understand changes that might impact your users.

December 18, 2020

Cost optimization recommendations for AWS unattached volumes

You can now view and analyze the unattached volumes in your AWS infrastructure. By using the unattached volume recommendations displayed on the Dashboard or the Recommendations tab, you can manage your resources efficiently and reduce unnecessary expenditure. The recommendations provide specific details about the unattached volumes that need attention and the estimated cost savings (in $) that you can achieve by implementing the recommendations. For details, see Unattached volume recommendations.

December 07, 2020

BigQuery support for GCP connector

You can now export your cloud billing data to GCP BigQuery dataset. For details, see Google Cloud Platform connector.

AWS trust-based role authentication support for AWS utilization connector

AWS cloud connector can now collect utilization data from multiple AWS accounts that are authenticated by using the AWS trust-based role authentication. The connector connects to the parent account and makes use of the assume role policy to further connect to the child accounts. For details, see Amazon Web Services connector.

Cross-launch from recommendations page to BMC Discovery

Business services that are imported as resource pools are marked with Business Service and Imported labels in the resource pools list. Cross-launch links are now available from the idle and power on/off recommendations page for the resources that belong to these imported resource pools. These links can be used to launch BMC Helix Discovery to see the application model details. For details, see Idle VM recommendations and Power on-off recommendations for VMs.

23 September 2020

BMC Helix Cloud Cost available on BMC Helix Platform

BMC Helix Cloud Cost is now available as a service on BMC Helix Platform. The BMC Helix Platform Portal solution offers a set of integrated  BMC Helix products from a single console. It enables you to navigate between applications to get end-to-end visibility into your IT infrastructure without the need for separate logons. For information about BMC Helix Platform Portal, see  BMC Helix Portal documentation.

Showback feature to calculate shared resource cost

A new tab, Showback, added to the Configuration page allows you to calculate the cost of your resources that are shared between multiple cost centers, teams, or organizations. Tags are used to identify the shared resources and group them based on their assignments. You can divide the cost based on the percentage or ratio defined in your hybrid cloud infrastructure. For details, see Configuring Showback settings.

Cost optimization recommendations for AWS Relational Database instances

You can now view and analyze the idle database instances in your AWS infrastructure. Using these recommendations, you can manage your resources efficiently and reduce the costs. These recommendations provide specific details about the database instances that need attention and the estimated cost savings (in $) that you can achieve by implementing the recommendations. For details, see Idle database instance recommendations.

Purchase recommendations for Azure reserved instances

Purchase recommendations are now enhanced to support Azure reserved instances. These recommendations are generated after analyzing the currently running on-demand instances across all your Azure accounts. The recommendations provide specific details about the instances to be reserved such as region, term, operating system, and the estimated cost savings (in $) that you can achieve.

For more information, see Purchase recommendations for Azure reserved instances.

Graphical representation of CPU Usage in Idle and Power On/Off recommendations

You can now view the CPU usage for the last 30 days in a graphical format for the idle and scheduled power on-off recommendations. For details, see Idle VM recommendations, Idle database instance recommendations, and Power on-off recommendations for VMs.

Additional columns in the CSV file for Power On/Off recommendations 

The exported CSV file for the Power On-Off recommendations now contains busy pattern, idle pattern, and textual pattern information. For details, see Power on-off recommendations for VMs.

New notification type for budget and cost summary

You can now receive automatic email notifications about the performance of your resource pools against cost and budget. This notification can be scheduled with a monthly, weekly, or daily frequency. Using these notifications, you can identify the top 10 resources and services by their incurred cost for a specific resource pool. For details, see Budget And Cost Summary notification.

Integration with BMC Helix Chatbot to view cost optimization recommendations in a chat

As a BMC Helix Cloud Cost administrator, you can now request for budget recommendations for a business service or resource pool in a chatbot conversation by using the BMC Helix Chatbot. When you request for the business service or resource pool budget details, the chatbot responds with the budget and recommendations. You can then analyze the available recommendations and take actions on them through the chat conversation. For details, see Integrating with BMC Helix Virtual Agent.

PostgreSQL database support for TrueSight Capacity Optimization connector

The TrueSight Capacity Optimization connector can now import cost data from a TrueSight Capacity Optimization database server that uses a PostgreSQL database. The connector supports PostgreSQL database 10.12 and later versions. 

New option to filter tags

When creating a resource pool if you select resources by tag, you can use the new option, Contains, to filter the tag values. When you select multiple values from the same tag value category, OR condition is applied. So if the tag has even one of the tag values, it will be selected. When you select multiple values from different tag value categories, AND condition is applied. For details, see Managing Resource pools.

New tag to filter Azure Resource Groups

When creating a resource pool if you select resources by tag, you can use a new tag, azure_resource_group, to filter Azure Resource Groups. All the resource groups available for a particular subscription are displayed below the azure_resource_group tag.

Ability to add markup while configuring discounts

As a Tenant Admin user, you can now configure markup on the original catalog cost of the cloud resources in the Discount settings. The discounts received from the cloud providers are used to calculate the original cost of the resource. You can now add markup to the original cost to cover overheads and profit. For details, see Configuring the Budget and Discount settings.

Customized ON-PREMISES tab name 

You can now customize the name of the ON-PREMISES tab available on the Summary page in the Dashboard. For example, if the tenant name is BMC then the name of the ON-PREMISES tab will be BMC CLOUD.

21 February 2020

For information about the features released in BMC Helix Cloud Cost 20.02, see  20.02 enhancements .