Product Documentation

AWS Billing Monitoring - Cost & Usage Report

Last updated on 28 January, 2022

AWS Billing Monitoring – Cost and Usage Report

LogicMonitor currently supports monitoring of billing data via AWS Cost and Usage Reports.

What data is monitored?

LogicMonitor can monitor the cost of any line items in your Cost & Usage Report. Following are the five out-of-the-box DataSources:

  1. Cost by Account (AWS_Billing_CostByAccount) – automatically monitors cost by Account Ids listed in the Cost & Usage Report
  2. Cost by Region (AWS_Billing_CostByRegion) – automatically monitors cost by Region per the Cost & Usage Report
  3. Cost by Service (AWS_Billing_CostByService) – automatically monitors cost by AWS Products listed in the Cost & Usage Report
  4. Cost by Operation (AWS_Billing_CostByOperation) – automatically monitors cost by operations listed in the Cost & Usage Report
  5. Cost by Tag (AWS_Billing_CostByTag) – monitors cost by cost allocation tags added as instances

Prerequisites

Accessing the Billing Files in the S3 Bucket

The role LogicMonitor uses to access your AWS account must have sufficient permission to access the reports. Following is the inline policy to be attached to that role:

{
"Statement": [
    {
      "Action": [
        "s3:GetObject",
        "s3:GetObjectVersion",
        "s3:ListBucket"
      ],
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Resource": [
        "arn:aws:s3:::S3BUCKETNAME",
        "arn:aws:s3:::S3BUCKETNAME/*"
      ]
    }
 ],
    "Version": "2012-10-17"
}

Where S3BUCKETNAME should be replaced with the name of the bucket you specified.

Importing New AWS Billing DataSources

See this topic for how to Import your DataSources.

Configuring Cost & Usage Report 

To configure the Cost and Usage report, complete the following steps:

1. Log into the AWS console.

2. On the upper right corner, click your username and select My Billing Dashboard.

3. On the left panel, click Cost and Usage Reports.

4. Click Create report and enter the following information on the Report content page:

  • Report name
  • Enable Additional report details and Data refresh settings options

5. Click Next.

Note: To make the billing file compatible with LogicMonitor, ensure to enable the support for Redshift.

6. On the S3 bucket page, enter the report path.


Note: You will require the S3 bucket and the Report path information while setting the billing account in LogicMonitor.
In addition, you must specify permissions for Cost and Usage reports.
You can use the sample policy provided by AWS (confirm bucket name) and the policy can be added to your bucket on the Permissions tab for the bucket.

7. Navigate to Manage Prod AWS and click the Billing tab.

8. Enable the Monitor AWS Billing Data option.

9. Enter the S3 Bucket Name and Report Path Prefix.

Once you have completed these steps, you should see Cost by service, region, account, and operation DataSources under the account level device.

Note: Products, regions, account ids, and operations are discovered dynamically as instances via custom Active Discovery methods. For more information, see the Active Discovery method for AWS DataSources.

AWS Multi-Dimensional DataSources

The Cost by tag DataSource is multi-instance but does not have Active Discovery (AD) enabled by default. You may use one of the following methods to add instances:

1. Manually add instances that correspond to the tags that you want to track cost for.

2. Enable AD such that tag values are auto-discovered and the cost is tracked for each instance.

Note: You must enable the tags as cost allocation tags and include the tags in your Cost & Usage Report for monitoring cost.

Manually Adding Instances

To manually add instances, complete the following steps:

1. Navigate to Resources > Devices > select Cost by Tag instance.

2. From the Device icon drop-down, select Manage Services and click Clone.

3. Enter the following information.

  • DataSource – should be the ‘Cost by Tag’ DataSource
  • Name – should be the Tag value you’d like to monitor cost for
  • Wildvalue – should be the name of the Tag as it appears in the Cost & Usage Report, which will usually be preceded by ‘user:’ to denote a user-specified tag

Once complete, data should populate for your new instance within a few minutes.

Enabling Active Discovery and Auto-Discovery 

To enable Active Discovery and auto-discovery of tag values in the DataSource definition, complete the following steps:

1. Navigate to Resources > Devices > select Cost bt Tag instance.

2. From the Device icon drop-down, select Manage Services and click Clone.

3. On the Add Instance page, select Enable Active Discovery option.

4. In the AWS Billing Report Attribute field, enter the tag key prefixed with ‘user’. (AWS prepends this in the Cost & Usage report as it’s a user-defined tag).

Note: All values for the specified key will be discovered, and costs will be monitored for each. So you’ll need a different DataSource for each tag key you want to track costs for.


For information on enabling Active Discovery in a DataSource, see Active Discovery for AWS CloudWatch Metrics.

Creating a Billing Dashboard

Once you’ve configured LogicMonitor’s AWS Billing monitoring and data collection has begun, you can visualize this data in a dashboard. Download this JSON template and import it into your account, or create your custom Dashboard.

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