How do FlexReports differ from the Cost History Report?

Products

• CloudHealth

Issue/Introduction

The Cost History report and FlexReports in the platform vary fundamentally due to the difference in how the data is processed.  This difference extends to other assets related to the data, such as the reports generated, perspectives for these reports, and so on. 

Report Datasets 

The following are a few instances of how the platform processes the data received to generate Cost History reports for AWS. These customizations are not applicable for FlexReports: 

• Cost Reallocation: The support and credit costs from the payer account are reallocated to the usage accounts based on the rules defined. 

• Full Amortization: Amortization costs are handled as per LineItems. 

• Chargeback Custom Line Items: Customized LineItems are added by the end user into the OLAP report based on the chargeback rules allocation. 

• Dedicated Host Apportioning: The actual cost incurred for No-Upfront and Partial Upfront RI items are calculated. 

For Azure and GCP, the following are a few instances where Cost History reports are processed differently as compared to FlexReports: 

• Azure OLAP Reports:  The Cost History report includes all types of subscriptions - Pay-as-you-go, CSP, and EA.  FlexReports supports only EA subscriptions. 

• GCP OLAP Reports:  The Cost History Report is generated after applying the cost reallocation for the original billing export data. FlexReports for GCP include the reallocated costs.  To align the FlexReports costs with GCP Cost History report, apply the gcp/project_id IS NOT NULL AND gcp/cost_type LIKE '%regular%' filter. 

• Azure Chargeback Custom Line Items:  Applicable for Cost History Reports and not for FlexReports. 

• GCP Chargeback Custom Line Items:  Applicable for Cost History New Reports and not for FlexReports. 

Perspective Grouping 

FlexReports considers the Perspective data refreshed every 6 hours in the platform and combines this data along with the original cloud dataset (AWS_CUR).  Perspective grouping for Cost History reports and FlexReports varies depending on the scenario.  The following are a couple of examples: 

1. No Resource ID or Unsupported Services:   For instance, indirect costs, new services that are not supported yet, short-lived assets, unsupported collection or derivation.  FlexReports uses ResourceID to allocate assets in the datasets.  In cases of assets with no Resource ID or for unsupported services, Cost History Report uses account level logic for the grouping.  This is not applicable for FlexReports. 

2. Supported Services with Resource IDs:  For assets that have a Resource ID, but are not allocated to a group, Cost History Report considers the accounts to group costs.  This is not applicable for FlexReports.