AWS Cost and Usage Report (CUR) is a comprehensive billing tool that provides detailed information about your AWS costs and usage. It is the most granular billing report available from AWS, containing line-item data for all AWS services you use across your accounts.
Key Features:
1. **Detailed Da…AWS Cost and Usage Report (CUR) is a comprehensive billing tool that provides detailed information about your AWS costs and usage. It is the most granular billing report available from AWS, containing line-item data for all AWS services you use across your accounts.
Key Features:
1. **Detailed Data**: The report includes hourly or daily line items, resource IDs, tags, and pricing information. This level of detail helps organizations understand exactly where their money is being spent.
2. **Customizable Delivery**: Reports can be delivered to an Amazon S3 bucket in CSV or Parquet format. You can configure the report to update multiple times daily, ensuring you have access to near real-time cost data.
3. **Integration Capabilities**: CUR integrates with AWS services like Amazon Athena, Amazon Redshift, and Amazon QuickSight for advanced analysis and visualization. This allows businesses to create custom dashboards and perform complex queries on their billing data.
4. **Cost Allocation Tags**: The report supports user-defined and AWS-generated tags, enabling organizations to categorize and track costs by department, project, or environment.
5. **Reserved Instance and Savings Plans Tracking**: CUR shows how Reserved Instances and Savings Plans are being applied to your usage, helping you measure the effectiveness of your commitment-based purchasing strategies.
6. **Multi-Account Support**: For organizations using AWS Organizations, the report can consolidate billing data across all member accounts, providing a unified view of enterprise-wide spending.
Use Cases:
- Budget tracking and forecasting
- Identifying cost optimization opportunities
- Chargebacks to internal departments
- Compliance and audit requirements
The AWS Cost and Usage Report is available at no additional charge, though standard S3 storage costs apply for storing the reports. It serves as the foundation for organizations seeking deep visibility into their cloud spending patterns.
AWS Cost and Usage Report - Complete Guide
What is AWS Cost and Usage Report?
The AWS Cost and Usage Report (CUR) is the most comprehensive set of cost and usage data available from AWS. It provides detailed information about your AWS costs and usage, broken down by service, pricing, tags, and more. The report is delivered to an Amazon S3 bucket that you specify and can be updated multiple times per day.
Why is AWS Cost and Usage Report Important?
Understanding the CUR is crucial for several reasons:
• Granular Cost Visibility: It provides the most detailed level of cost and usage data, allowing organizations to understand exactly where their money is being spent.
• Cost Optimization: By analyzing the report, businesses can identify opportunities to reduce costs and optimize resource usage.
• Budgeting and Forecasting: Historical data helps organizations predict future costs and plan budgets accordingly.
• Chargeback and Showback: Organizations can allocate costs to specific departments, projects, or teams using cost allocation tags.
• Compliance and Auditing: Detailed records support financial audits and compliance requirements.
How Does AWS Cost and Usage Report Work?
1. Setup: You create a Cost and Usage Report in the AWS Billing Console and specify an S3 bucket for delivery.
2. Data Collection: AWS collects usage data across all your AWS services and accounts.
3. Report Generation: AWS generates reports containing line items for each unique combination of AWS product, usage type, and operation.
4. Delivery: Reports are delivered to your S3 bucket in CSV or Parquet format.
5. Integration: You can integrate CUR data with AWS Athena, Amazon Redshift, or Amazon QuickSight for analysis and visualization.
Key Features of the Cost and Usage Report:
• Contains usage data at the hourly, daily, or monthly level • Includes resource IDs for tracking individual resources • Supports cost allocation tags for organizing costs • Can be configured to include Reserved Instance and Savings Plans data • Provides pricing information including discounts • Supports multiple file formats including CSV and Parquet
Exam Tips: Answering Questions on AWS Cost and Usage Report
Tip 1: Remember that CUR is the most comprehensive billing report available. If a question asks about the most detailed cost information, CUR is typically the answer.
Tip 2: Know the delivery mechanism - CUR reports are stored in an Amazon S3 bucket that you own and configure.
Tip 3: Understand that CUR can be integrated with Amazon Athena for querying, Amazon Redshift for data warehousing, and Amazon QuickSight for visualization.
Tip 4: CUR differs from AWS Cost Explorer. Cost Explorer is a visual tool for exploring costs, while CUR provides raw, downloadable data files.
Tip 5: If a question mentions needing to track costs by individual resource IDs, CUR is the appropriate tool since it can include resource-level data.
Tip 6: Remember that CUR supports cost allocation tags, which help organize and categorize costs by department, project, or custom criteria.
Tip 7: For questions about historical billing analysis or third-party tool integration, CUR is usually the correct answer because it provides exportable, detailed data.
Tip 8: CUR is a free service, but you pay for S3 storage where the reports are delivered.
Common Exam Scenarios:
• A company needs to analyze costs at a granular level → AWS Cost and Usage Report • An organization wants to integrate billing data with a third-party tool → AWS Cost and Usage Report • A business needs to track which specific EC2 instances are generating costs → AWS Cost and Usage Report with resource IDs enabled • Finance team needs detailed billing data for auditing → AWS Cost and Usage Report