The complexities of an enterprise AWS configuration can be staggering. In fact, the ability to determine your required budget can be a blocking factor in moving to AWS. Thus, Amazon has provided the Cost Explorer tool to help us figure out what our environment is likely to cost.
Getting Started With Cost Explorer
The first thing you need to do is enable Cost Explorer. This is done by logging into your AWS dashboard and then clicking on the billing menu item. This step should take you to the billing summary page for your account. In the Spend Summary Title bar towards the top left will be a Cost Explorer button. Click on this to enable cost explorer. Unfortunately, it can take up to twenty-four hours to get your initial data populated. During this time, the AWS system is reviewing your historical spend data and building projections for the near future.
Cost Explorer is Great for Planning
This tool aims at providing you accurate details about environment based on past usage. Thus, it is not the best way to plan when you have a lot of changes coming. The data in these reports will help you slice and dice the ways your costs have been generated in prior months. However, this is often a crucial part of building a budget for the future. Once you have these reports, you will have far more accurate data to use with the pricing tool.
One Piece of the Puzzle
We started with this budget related tool in our tour because it takes time for it to build and analyze your usage data. There are a few other tools provided to ensure you stay within a budget and to estimate and reduce future costs. Take it for a spin and look for extraneous services and costs in your current configuration. Stay tuned to this blog for more ways to budget in the future.
