How to use the Cost Management tile

The Cost Management tiles show the cost of Azure resources, resource groups or subscriptions. Analysing your Azure costs should help you identify big costs early, spot trends, and tie costs to applications.

Overview

After clicking on the Cost Management tile there are several Cost Management graph types to choose from:

Cost tile types

Scalar

The Cost Management Scalar tile can be scoped to show the total cost of resources, resource groups or subscriptions. You can list resources to be summed, or select all of a particular type, resource group or tag, as described below.

Line Graph

The Cost Management Line Graph tile shows the cost over time, either as an aggregated single line or individual lines.

Treemap

Clicking on a subscription, resource group or resource will take you to the drilldown page for that item.

Sun Burst

The value in the centre always shows the total for the hovered item.

Clicking on a subscription, resource group or resource will take you to the drilldown page. Hovering over a segment shows the item's name as a tooltip, and the legend labels show the top 5 most expensive items.

Utilization Treemap

The Utilization Treemap tile combines cost with metric. The tile must be scoped so that all the objects are of the same type, because metrics are being used (as with Performance tiles). For example, scope to a resource group or subscription and then use the filter by type to only show virtual machines. For more information see the walkthrough below.

Cost tile options

Scope

The scope section allows you to define which resources are used to calculate the total cost shown.

For example, if you use the list option to select several individual resources, then the sum of the cost for these items will be shown.

Known issue: Cost accrued for deleted resources is not included.

You might use the type option to show the total cost of all resources with a particular type, for example all virtual machines. When using the Utilization Treemap tile it must be scoped so that all the objects are of the same type, because metrics are being used.

For more information see How to scope tiles

Azure role-based access control (RBAC)

It's worth noting that users will only see in SquaredUp what they are allowed to see in the Azure portal, which is controlled by role-based access control (RBAC) for Azure resources.

If the user does not have access to any of the resources that the Cost tile is scoped to, they will see a zero cost, or when scoped to a subscription: The subscription was not found in the list of available subscriptions.

If they have access to some of the resources they will not see the full cost, but instead see the cost of the subset of resources that they have permission to see.

Aggregate

Removing the aggregate tick for a Cost Line Graph will show a line for each cost rather than one total cost line.

Timeframe

When adding and editing the tile you can choose either use page timeframe or specific timeframe.

For the Utilization Treemap tile only last 7 days and last 30 days are available, as it's only possible to get metric data from the API for up to 30 days.

For more information see How to use Timeframe option.

Scalar

You can change the font size of the cost figure shown.

Data range

The Data Range option allows you to choose the range of the y-axis.

fit to data shows the data minimum to data maximum

fit to data (from zero) shows from 0 to the data maximum

custom allows you to specify the min and max

custom fit - allows you to specify the min and max limits, so that data outside your settings will not be shown. If all the data falls within your specified ranges then the y-axis range will fit to the data rather than your caps.

Display

The height slider allows you stretch or shrink the Line Graph or Sun Burst height.

Color

The color section allows you to choose how the Treemap and Sun Burst graphs are displayed. For example, if you select resource group then each resource group's resources will be shown in a different shade.

Label

show legend allows you to display a key to the coloured graph lines. When this is selected you can change from the automatic label to specify your own label format. The default label shows the name metric and unit.

The Treemap graph also includes a sublabel option.

Custom labelling

Using the custom option you can create your own advanced label to specify exactly how you want the results to be displayed (using both static text and dynamic properties) to ensure that the results always make sense.

Custom labels use Mustache syntax to insert properties. If you're familiar with mustache, you can specify advanced labels that can transform properties prior to displaying them (such as showing only a portion of text, converting a number or reformatting a date), such as using the javascript split method to separate properties into substrings to make the result more readable.

For more information see How to use custom labelling

Walkthrough: Using the Utilization Treemap to show a heated treemap of cost and percentage CPU

This walkthrough shows you how to add a Utilization Treemap tile to a dashboard.

1. In SquaredUp navigate to where you'd like the dashboard to be created. Hover over the + button and click dashboard.

2. Give the dashboard a title, by replacing the text that says New Dashboard.

   The dashboard is saved as you go along so there's no need to save your changes. You can find your dashboard by clicking on the right-hand menu ☰ > system > unpublished.

3. A new tile has already been added to the dashboard. Edit the title by overwriting the placeholder value New tile with your own title.

4. The tile selector will already be open. Click Cost Management.

5. Click on the Utilization Treemap button.
   
   

6. Next we need to scope the tile. In the scope section add a resource group or subscription.

7.  Tick filter by type and in the box type Virtual machines.

8. In the metric section select a suitable metric such as  Percentage CPU. At this point you should see a Utilization Treemap.
   The size is the cost representation, and the colour is the metric. By default the metric value is the average for the timeframe selected, in this case the average for the last 30 days, so we'll change this to maximum next.
9. Under aggregation click on maximum
10. Click on the color section and change the colour if you wish. The darker the colour the higher the metric value, in this case the higher the percentage CPU. So we can look for large rectangles (high cost) with pale colour (low CPU use) to see if there are VMs we are under-utilising.
11. Click done.
    
    

Known Issues

• Deleted resources are not included when scoping the Cost Management tile leading to discrepancies with the Azure Portal (SU-7709)
• Cost tiles may show small differences from the values shown in the Azure Portal when longer timeframes are used (SU-7896)
• The calculated totals for Treemap and Sunburst tiles do not include the cost of each item that, over the selected timeframe, does not exceed 0.50 in the currency unit for that item (SQ-2527)
• SquaredUp for Azure does not currently support Azure Cost Management’s cost allocation rules