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Billing and Cost

AWS Billing and Cost Management is a suite of tools that helps you monitor, manage, and optimize your AWS usage and costs. It provides features for budgeting, analyzing usage patterns, and forecasting future expenses to ensure cost-effective resource management.

Key Features and Characteristics

1. Billing Dashboard

  • Provides a high-level overview of your AWS usage and charges.
  • Displays current and forecasted month-to-date costs.
  • Offers insights into service-specific expenditures.

2. Cost Allocation Tags

  • User-Defined Tags: Tags you define and apply to categorize AWS resources (e.g., Department: Finance).
  • AWS-Generated Tags: Automatically generated by AWS for certain resources.
  • Use Case: Track costs by projects, departments, or teams.

3. Cost and Usage Reports (CUR)

  • Comprehensive reports detailing AWS resource usage and costs.
  • Delivered to an Amazon S3 bucket in CSV or Parquet format.
  • Can be integrated with analytics tools like Amazon Athena or Amazon QuickSight for further analysis.

4. AWS Budgets

  • Set spending thresholds for your account or specific services.
  • Types of budgets:
  • Cost Budgets: Track total spending.
  • Usage Budgets: Monitor service usage (e.g., EC2 instance hours).
  • Savings Plans Budgets: Track Savings Plans utilization.
  • Reservation Budgets: Monitor Reserved Instances (RIs).
  • Configurable alerts via email or SNS notifications.

5. Cost Explorer

  • Interactive tool for visualizing and analyzing AWS costs and usage.
  • Features include:
  • Custom filtering by service, tag, or linked account.
  • Granular breakdowns by hourly, daily, or monthly usage.
  • Forecasting based on historical trends.

6. Savings Plans and Reserved Instances

  • Savings Plans: Flexible pricing models offering cost savings in exchange for a usage commitment (e.g., compute hours).
  • Reserved Instances (RIs): Upfront or partial upfront payment options for EC2 instances with significant savings over On-Demand pricing.

7. Free Tier Usage Tracking

  • Monitors free tier usage limits to avoid unexpected charges.
  • Notifications when usage approaches or exceeds free tier limits.

8. Consolidated Billing

  • Allows organizations to consolidate billing across multiple AWS accounts under a management account.
  • Benefits:
  • Single bill for all accounts.
  • Cost-sharing and pooling of usage discounts (e.g., volume discounts).

9. Service Quotas Integration

  • Monitors service usage against AWS quotas.
  • Helps prevent unexpected charges due to exceeding usage limits.

10. Tax Settings and Invoicing

  • Tax Settings: Configure tax information specific to your region (e.g., VAT/GST).
  • Invoicing: Access detailed, downloadable invoices for each billing period.

11. Currency Conversion

  • Supports viewing charges in your preferred currency.
  • AWS bills are always generated in USD, with conversions provided for reference.

12. Anomaly Detection

  • Automatically identifies unusual spending patterns.
  • Provides actionable insights to investigate cost anomalies.

13. Integration with AWS Organizations

  • Enables centralized billing and cost management for multiple accounts.
  • Linked accounts share discounts and usage data with the management account.

14. Reports and Notifications

  • Cost Reports: Auto-generated reports summarizing costs by service or account.
  • Alerts and Notifications:
  • Triggered when budgets or thresholds are exceeded.
  • Configurable for email and SNS delivery.

15. Third-Party Tool Compatibility

  • Compatible with external cost management tools via APIs.
  • Examples include tools for advanced cost analytics or enterprise reporting.

IAM Access to Billing and Cost Management

  • By default, the root user has full access to all billing and cost management tools.
  • IAM User Access Activation:
  • By default, IAM user access to the Billing and Cost Management console is disabled.
  • The root user or an authorized IAM user must enable this access in the Billing and Cost Management preferences.
  • Once activated, IAM users with appropriate permissions can access the Billing and Cost Management console.
  • Common Permissions:
  • aws-portal:*: Grants full access to the Billing and Cost Management console.
  • ce:*: Provides access to Cost Explorer API and related tools.
  • cur:*: Grants access to Cost and Usage Reports.
  • budgets:*: Allows management of AWS Budgets.
  • Best Practices:
  • Use IAM policies to grant least privilege.
  • Restrict access to sensitive billing data to authorized users only.

AWS Billing and Cost Management tools are essential for ensuring efficient resource utilization and cost control, making them integral to managing AWS accounts effectively.