Gone are the days of self-cloud management where billing used to be simple and straightforward. With increasing and distributed cloud adoption across organizations, the newfangled version of Cloud has evolved into something much more Byzantine i.e. multi-accounts management. Triggering this multifaceted nature of the cloud, IT departments and CFOs communicated the need for centralized cloud management across business units and overall cost optimization.
A good example of public cloud pioneer playing in this space is AWS. AWS has introduced some of the best features in the industry. Features realted to complete transparency of cloud cost and usage; such as Consolidated Billing for enterprises having multiple AWS accounts. This feature shaped a two-level structure. Individual accounts on one-level and consolidated accounts offering visibility into all individual account costs on the other.
The Complexity of Multi-Account Management:
Within an enterprise, different workloads running in the cloud demand different cost allocation based on resources, regions, services used, etc. Since all workloads under AWS cannot be tagged, splitting them into multiple accounts, one account for each workload can help you define cost allocation and differentiate better.
But wait! More is more of a problem.
Controlling the cost and usage of AWS cloud infrastructure across multiple services and accounts can be a nightmare when it comes to an organization-level, regardless of the size. Every division or department incorporates numerous business units that host various workloads comprising of their own applications.
Adding to the very fact, AWS has not evolved much in terms of presenting granular, detailed reports to its customers. There is also a need for multi-account view as well as individual account view within a single glass pane still remains.
Opting consolidated billing of AWS can work only if you agree to lose the flexibility to leverage many individual features. With aggregated billing management becomes further more intricate when an organization has:
- More than one consolidated billing account
- A large number of accounts (say dozens or hundreds of accounts)
- Accounts are not linked to any consolidated bill
Centilytics does not let the cat out of bag:
To bolster enterprises in terms of multi-account management, Centilytics delivers an easy-to-use Cloud enablement solution. The managed platform enables you to consolidate the cost and usage of every one of your accounts. That includes multiple linked as well as standalone accounts into one sweet format.
Linked or not, you simply need to feed your AWS accounts into Centilytics and the related data is automatically fetched and aggregated within a single dashboard. This allows you to gain complete visibility into each one of your accounts and perform organization-wide cost and usage optimization analysis with hourly-level granularity.
Dive Deeper into Multi-Accounts Feature of Centilytics:
Multi-accounts view in Centilytics delivers actionable insights on what exactly is going on in your accounts, cost & percentage-wise, service-wise, and region-wise.
A quick walkthrough of how Centilytics caters to the enterprise aggregation needs will give you more clarity on the solution.
The header segment of Multi-Accounts gives you a summary of the largest account that incurs maximum cost. Also the smallest account that incurs minimum cost, and the total cost of both.
- Accounts Cost And Percentage
Accounts Cost and Percentage segment depicts the cost distribution of multiple accounts owned by a user or the accounts the user has access to. A pie representation along with a table shows the cost and cost percentage share of each account.
This segment gives you detailed insights about the Account that has incurred the maximum cost overall.
2. Multi-Account Cost Distribution
The line graph of “Multi Account Cost Distribution” represents the costs incurred by various accounts using acquired services, over a period of date range as selected by the user.
It is highly interactive and customizable for filtering data as one can easily view the costs on monthly, weekly, daily, or on an hourly basis.
As shown in the above graph, the cost of each account is represented by a specific colored line. Hovering the cursor over those colored lines on a specific plotted date or time opens a drill down list of all the accounts in use (which you have access to). You can also get their individual costs incurred on that date or time.
If one wishes to see the billing stats for only a couple of accounts, he/she can easily enable or disable the desired accounts from their respective legends present at the bottom of the graph.
3. Accounts Cost By Region
The Regional Distribution map under “Accounts Cost by Region” segment displays the entire map of the regions with active AWS accounts. This map-based distribution shows the costs incurred in various regions.
One can go deeper into the map by hovering, the cursor, over a plotted point (colored dot). This will open a drill down list of all the accounts along with their respective costs incurred in that region.
4. Accounts Cost By Service
“Accounts Cost by Service” enables you to view, compare and analyze the cost incurred by multiple linked accounts. You can also do this for standalone accounts based on various AWS services they are using. It also provides a powerful filter to view your cloud expenditure. The fiters are based on Resource Tags and Account IDs up to the hourly level of detailing.
The graph displays accounts-by-services cost with the help of colored boxes, plotted accordingly.
By hovering, the cursor over a colored box, one can view the cost incurred in the respective account. Due to a particular AWS service marked against that box. The color gradients become darker as cost increase, for better visualization.
Automated Reports and RI Planner for your Multiple Accounts:
Centilytics allows you to glean detailed information about your AWS usage and costs across multiple accounts into a single assimilated report. Reports can be received monthly, weekly, or on a custom basis. Not only you get the flexibility to customize your reports, but also to categorize them by Regions, Resource Tags, Account IDs, Blended & Unblended costs, in order to gain insights on specific account(s).
AWS Reserved Instances are a great option to reduce your cloud bill and maximize your savings. But, bad RI decisions can cost you your business.
Just as you can analyze cloud costs for all your accounts, a single standalone account or a subset of accounts within a single report, the RI planner in Centilytics gives you the privilege to manage your complete RI lifecycle across any and all AWS accounts. You get strategic recommendations on your RI purchases, utilization best practices, and recommendations on optimizing the existing RI inventory.
Bottom Line
Multiple aggregated accounts and/or independent accounts can add ample complexities to an organization trying to manage their cloud-based infrastructure. Though AWS, in terms of transparency does a commendable job in the industry. Customers do need a management backbone to effectively use the cloud services at an enterprise scale.
Should you wish to find out more about how Centilytics can help you explore your cloud potential thereby catering to your cloud management and optimization needs, take a free 3-month trial today.