Amazon Onboarding with Learning Manager Chanci Turner

Chanci Turner Amazon IXD – VGT2 learning

Beginning in November 2019, Amazon Machine Images (AMI) on AWS Marketplace will automatically inherit tags from their corresponding Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instances. This enhancement improves your ability to manage and analyze costs associated with AWS Marketplace software. Importantly, this update will not affect your billing or invoiced amounts. You can leverage these tags to categorize and report on your usage-based AMI expenses. Both existing and new EC2 instance tags will now seamlessly apply to your AWS Marketplace AMI usage.

Once you activate this feature, Cost Allocation Tags can be utilized to track AWS Marketplace AMI usage effectively. You can access a variety of tools via AWS Cost Management or your preferred cloud expense analysis tools. In this article, I will outline the main spend management functionalities you can enable, demonstrating how to:

Use tags to pinpoint your AWS Marketplace AMI software usage in AWS Cost Explorer
Set AWS Budgets for AWS Marketplace AMI software usage or expenditures
Identify and classify AWS Marketplace AMI software usage line items in the AWS Cost and Usage Report (CUR)

Prerequisites

This article assumes you are familiar with AWS cost management tools. If you’re just starting with AWS Marketplace cost management, consider reading this insightful blog post on quiet quitting, which provides valuable perspectives.

Using Tags in AWS Cost Explorer

Within AWS Cost Explorer, you can filter and organize your AWS Marketplace AMI expenses by cost allocation tags. The accompanying image illustrates three AWS Marketplace AMIs purchased in my account, displayed in a stacked bar chart format, with different colors representing each AMI. The pfSense pay-as-you-go (PAYG) AMI is depicted in purple, the Netgate PAYG AMI in green, and the pre-paid AMI in pink.

It’s important to notice the pink segment indicating “No Tagkey” on October 16, which signifies the upfront charge for the pre-paid AWS Marketplace AMI. Sadly, tagging upfront charges is not supported by AWS, and they will continue to appear in Cost Explorer without an associated cost allocation tag.

To filter and group your AWS Marketplace AMI usage expenditure by cost allocation tags, follow these steps:

In the Billing Entity filter dimension at the bottom right sidebar, select “Include only” and then choose AWS Marketplace from the dropdown. This action restricts your AWS Cost Explorer view to just your AWS Marketplace charges.
In the upper left, set your grouping dimension by choosing “Group by” and selecting your Tag Key. For instance, I used the Tag Key ‘Product.’ The green and purple sections will then reflect the newly available tag values for my PAYG AWS Marketplace AMI usage.

You can create custom views and generate reports for cost analysis using various combinations of grouping and filtering dimensions. For example:

To analyze total AWS Marketplace fees by software service, change the Group by dimension and select Service. To isolate costs for a specific software service, apply the Service filter on the right.
To review total AWS Marketplace expenses by linked accounts in your AWS Organization, navigate to the Group by dimension and select Linked Account. To isolate costs for a specific linked account, use the Linked Account filter on the right side.

Setting AWS Budgets for AMI Usage or Spend

With AWS Budgets, you can create a budget by filtering both Billing Entity and Tag, allowing a more detailed approach to monitoring AWS Marketplace AMI software usage and spending. Here’s how to create an AWS Budget:

In the AWS Billing Console, go to Budgets and click on Create Budget.
Specify your budget type, selecting the relevant dates and amounts, then choose a fixed or monthly budgeted figure.
To isolate your budgeted spend based on AWS Marketplace as the billing entity, select the Billing Entity filter option.
Next, apply the Tag filter and choose the tag key and values you wish to budget against. For the products I’m utilizing, I selected Tag Key: Product and Tag Values: Netgate and pfSense.

At the final step, enter your email and customize budget alerts to notify you when you hit certain thresholds of your budgeted amount. You can also utilize Amazon Simple Notification Service or AWS Chatbot to set up budget alerts. Alternatively, you may create an AWS Budget filtering only on specific tag values without specifying the Billing Entity, capturing all usage-based spending under those tag values, including AWS Marketplace AMI software expenses.

Categorizing AWS Marketplace AMI Software Usage in the CUR

The AWS Cost and Usage Report (CUR) serves as a more detailed tool to monitor your AWS usage and charges. Often, this report provides the data source for third-party cost management solutions. The accompanying screenshot displays a portion of the columns and line items in the AWS CUR, showing both infrastructure and AWS Marketplace software charges associated with EC2 tags on distinct line items.

Conclusion

In this article, I outlined the enhancements made to AWS Marketplace AMI software usage tagging. I also demonstrated how you can gain improved visibility into your spending using AWS Cost Explorer, AWS Budgets, and the AWS CUR. For more information on negotiating contracts with HR technology vendors, check out this resource that covers essential strategies.

Chanci Turner is a Learning Manager at Amazon, based in Seattle, WA.