Analyzing cloud costs against budgets

Use the Budget page to proactively analyze the cloud budgets for your business services and cost pools according to the defined budget cycle. The budget cycle can be monthly, quarterly, half-yearly, or yearly. Once you define the budget cycle, you can allocate budget to the business service or cost pool.

The Budget page displays the budget and the projected cost values for all business services and cost pools in your public cloud platforms such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Azure, and Google Cloud Platform, and your on-premises infrastructure.

From the Budget page, you can achieve the following goals: 

• View and compare the budget details for all business services or cost pools in your environment. 
• Analyze and manage the budget of a specific business service or a cost pool.  
• Identify the business services or cost pools with over-allocated or underutilized budgets. 
• View and compare actual and forecasted costs of individual providers in multi-cloud cases.

For more information, see the following sections:

Before you begin

• Ensure that the product administrator has completed the following tasks:
  • Define the budget cycle for which you want to set the budgets and manage them. For more information, see Configuring the budget settings.
  • For business services - Import the business service data for your public clouds and on-premises data center. For more information, see Collecting business service data. 
    

    The following image shows a few examples of business services as displayed in the Capacity Optimization Workspace:

    

  • For cost pools - Add the required cost pools and compute their cost and usage information. For more information, see Adding and managing a cost pool. 
• Ensure that you have set the budget for each business service or cost pool. For more information, see Setting a budget.

To analyze cloud cost against budgets

1. In the navigation pane of the TrueSight console , select Cloud Cost Control and then, click the Budget tab.
   The Budget page is displayed. The budget details are displayed as color-coded charts and table. By default, the table and charts display data for the current month and all available business services and cost pools. 
   
   

2. View a quick budget summary according to the currently selected month.

   1. Costs donut chart	To compare the total spent and remaining budget for the business services and cost pools, review this donut chart. Key characteristics of this chart are as follows: Total budget is an aggregated value based on the business services and cost pools displayed in the table. When you apply global or table filters, the value is updated accordingly.  On hovering your mouse over a slice of the chart, you can view details of the spent or remaining budget (in percentage and currency) according to the total budget.
   2. Balance/Projected Balance box	To know details of the remaining budget for all business services and cost pools, review this box. Key characteristics of this box are as follows: When the selected month is in the budget cycle that is not over yet or is in the future, the Projected Balance label is displayed.  When the selected month is in the budget cycle that is already over, the Balance label is displayed.   Total amount (displayed in the center) is an aggregated value of the balance/projected balance of all the business services and cost pools displayed in the table. When you apply global or table filters, the value is updated accordingly. The amount is displayed in Black font when the balance is positive. The positive amount indicates that you are either in budget or under-utilizing your budget. The percentage of remaining budget is also displayed.  The amount is displayed in Red font and in brackets when the balance is negative. A negative amount indicates that the budget for some or all your business services or cost pools is not utilized effectively. The percentage of exceeding budget is displayed.
   3. Classification/Projected Classification donut chart	To compare the overspenders, underspenders and in budget business services and cost pools, review this donut chart. Key characteristics of this chart are as follows: When the selected month is in the budget cycle that is not over yet or is in the future, the Projected Classification label is displayed.  When the selected month is in the budget cycle that is already over, the Classification label is displayed.   Indicates the total number of overspenders and underspenders based on all the business services and cost pools displayed in the table. When you apply global or table filters, these values are updated accordingly. Whether the business service or cost pool is In budget, Overspender, or Underspender is decided based on the threshold that you set in the Settings page. If the projected cost percentage for a business service or cost pool is less than the underspender threshold value, then it is classified as Underspender. If the projected cost percentage for a business service or cost pool is greater than the overspender threshold value, then it is classified as Overspender. If the projected cost percentage for a business service or cost pool is between the underspenders and overspenders thresholds values, then it is classified as In budget. Each slice of the pie chart has a unique color associated with a classification Red color indicates the business services that are overspending their budget Yellow color indicates the business services that are underspending their budget Blue color indicates the business services that are utilizing the budget effectively and are within budget. On hovering your mouse over a slice of the chart, you can view details of the specific classification such as a number of business services in that classification, budget threshold, and balance/projected balance (in currency).

   
   

3. To compare the budget of all business services and cost pools, review the table:

   Column	Description
   Severity Icon	Indicates the severity or warning when the budget is overspent. The yellow warning icon is displayed when the projected cost is more than the budget amount. The red severity icon is displayed when the spent budget is more than the budget amount.
   Budget	Name of the business service or cost pool that uses the resources of the public cloud provider or on-premises infrastructure. Clicking on one of the business services in this column takes you to the Budget tab of the Business Service Cost Details page. Clicking on one of the cost pools in this column takes you to the Budget tab of the Cost Pool Details page
   Budget Amount [$]	Budget amount allocated to the business service or cost pool for this budget cycle. For information about setting the budgets, see Setting a budget.
   Cost [$]	Amount of the allocated budget this business service or cost pool has consumed till the current date in the budget cycle.
   Cost vs Budget [%]	Percentage of the allocated budget this business service or cost pool has consumed till the current date in the budget cycle.
   Projected Cost [$]1	Forecasted total cost of the business service or cost pool for the budget cycle. Calculated based on the spent budget as on the current date in the budget cycle.
   Projected Cost vs Budget [%]1	Percentage of the forecasted total cost of the business service or cost pool for the budget cycle. Calculated based on the spent budget as on the current date in the budget cycle.
   Projected Balance [$]1	Forecasted balance amount that this business service or cost pool will have at the end of the budget cycle, with respect to the projected cost and the allocated budget. The amount is displayed in Red font and in brackets when the budget is projected to be overspent. A negative amount indicates that your business service or cost pool is not utilizing the budget effectively.
   Balance [$]	Balance amount of this business service or cost pool for the budget cycle, with respect to the allocated budget. The amount is displayed in Red font and in brackets when the budget is overspent. A negative amount indicates that your business service or cost pool did not utilize the budget effectively.
   Type	Displays the type of the cloud entity such as Business Service or Cost Pool.
   Providers	Cloud provider that hosts the resources that are assigned to the business service or cost pool. A business service or cost pool might have resources provisioned on more than one cloud provider.
   Projected Classification1	Classification of the business service or cost pool based on projected cost versus budget. Whether the business service or cost pool is In budget, Overspender, or Underspender is decided based on the threshold that you set in the Settings page. You can apply filter on the column values to filter the overspender, underspender, or in budget business services or cost pools.
   Classification	Classification of the business service or cost pool based on cost versus budget. Whether the business service or cost pool is In budget, Overspender, or Underspender is decided based on the threshold that you set in the Settings page. You can apply filter on the column values to filter the overspender, underspender, or in budget business services or cost pools.

   ¹ - The Projected Cost vs Budget, Projected Cost, Projected Balance, and Projected Classification fields are displayed only when the budget cycle that you are currently viewing is not over yet or when the budget cycle is in the future. If the currently selected budget cycle is already over, the table displays spent budget and not projected costs.
   

   Note

   Cost forecasts are predictions. They are based on the historical cost data. The Cost Estimation service applies algorithms to this data to extrapolate a modeled behavior and to forecast future costs.

   The forecasted costs might differ from your actual charges for each month. Here are some of the reasons for the difference:

   • Addition of an extraordinary number of new resources or services, which were not observed during the history periods.
   • Termination of an extraordinary number of new resources or services, which were not observed during the history periods.
   • An extraordinary increase or decrease in resource usage, which was not observed during the history periods.

   The accuracy of the cost forecasts improves as the amount of historical data increases.

4. To view the budget details of business services or cost pools for a specific provider only or for a specific month, use the global filters:
   

   Global filters:

   1. Cloud Provider quick filter: Click a cloud provider button to show or hide the provider's data on the page. 2. Monthly filter: Click the monthly filter to select a specific month for which you want to view the data.

   Info: By default, the page displays data for the current month and for all available cloud providers. The options that you select in the global filters (Cloud Provider quick filter, Monthly filter) apply to all the page elements (table and charts).
   

   
   

5. (Optional) To save an offline copy of the budget details, click Settings and select Export to Excel or Export to PDF.