[Lighthouse - POC] PierCloud FinOps Platform - Configuration

Configuration Process for Lighthouse Product

Welcome to Pier Cloud!

Elaborated to provide clear and precise guidance, this guide covers the configuration of the AWS Lighthouse Product, aiming to facilitate the understanding and execution of the necessary steps to start using it.

In the AWS environment:

1. In the Services menu, choose the Cloud Formation option.

1. Click on Stacks.

1. Click Create Stack.

1. Choose the option: Template is ready, and then Upload a template file. Locate the PierCloud.yml file, downloaded from the platform in step 1 and after uploading the file click Next.

1. Enter the name that was registered in Lighthouse for the Stack and in parameters enter the bucket name then click Next.

1. If you want to assign any TAG to this Role, you can do so on this page. Otherwise, scroll to the bottom and click Next.

1. Click the checkbox to confirm the creation of the resource and then click Create stack.

1. Cloud Formation will start creating the PierCloud Role. After a few minutes you should see CREATE_COMPLETE in the status column.

1. That's it, the configuration is complete.

   Below is a summary of the information that must be sent to Pier Cloud:

• Role: billing-customername

  • S3 Bucket Name;

  • Organization Account ID;

  • Path - Location of the files;

  • Type of file in the bucket - csv/parquet.

Remember that this role needs to be configured on the Organization account.

PART II: CUR Configuration

This part should only be performed if the CUR is not yet enabled within the company.

Creating AWS Cost and Usage Reports

AWS Cost and Usage Reports monitor your usage and provide estimated charges associated with your account.

The reports contain line items for each unique combination of AWS services, usage type, and operation used by your AWS account. You can customize the AWS Cost and Usage Reports to aggregate the information by hour, day, or month.

Considerations before configuration:

If the CUR (Cost and Usage Report) configuration has already been performed previously, it is not necessary to repeat the process. However, if the current configuration is not in parquet format or is not hourly, we recommend performing the configuration again.

The bucket structure for objects must follow the format below:

1. First layer of folders named with the year number, example: year=2024.

2. Second layer of folders named with the month number, example: month=5.

For configuration, follow these steps:

1. Log in to the Billing and Cost Management Console at: Console AWS Billing

2. In the navigation pane, select Cost and Usage Reports.

3. Choose Create Report

4. In Report name, choose the name of your report.

5. In Report additional content, select Include resource IDs to include the IDs of each individual resource in the report

Note:

Including resource IDs creates individual line items for each of your resources. This can significantly increase the size of your cost and usage report files, based on your AWS usage.

1. Select Split Cost Allocation Data to include detailed cost and usage of shared resources (Amazon ECS only).

Note:

Including split cost allocation data creates individual line items for each of your resources (i.e. ECS tasks). This can significantly increase the size of your cost and usage report files, based on your AWS usage.

1. For data update settings, select whether you want AWS cost and usage reports to be updated if AWS applies refunds, credits, or support fees to your account after your bill is finalized. When a report is updated, a new report is sent to Amazon S3.

Choose Next.

1. In S3 bucket, choose Configure.

2. In the Configure S3 Bucket dialog box, do the following:

   1. Select an existing bucket.

   2. Select Create a bucket, enter a bucket name, and choose the region where you want to create a new bucket.

3. Review the bucket policy, select The following default policy will be applied to your bucket, and choose Save.

4. In "Report path prefix", inform the report path prefix that you want to add before the report name.

5. For Time granularity, choose one of the following options

   1. Hourly (By Hour) if you want the line items in the report to be aggregated by hour.

   2. Daily (by day) if you want the line items in the report to be aggregated by day.

   3. Monthly if you want the line items in the report to be aggregated by month.

6. For Report versioning, choose whether you want each report version to be replaced by the latest report version or to be delivered in addition to previous versions.

Replacing reports can save on Amazon S3 storage costs.

Delivering new versions of reports can improve the auditability of billing data over time.

1. In Enable reporting data integration for, select whether you want to enable your cost and usage reports to integrate with Amazon Athena, Amazon Redshift, or Amazon QuickSight. The report is packaged in the following formats:

2. Athena: parquet format

3. Amazon Redshift ou Amazon QuickSight: compressão.gz

• Choose Next.

• After reviewing your report settings, choose Review and Complete.

Considerations:

The report is accessed through the billing-customername Role. Once this is done, the data loading and processing flow is accessed by Pier Cloud, and then it will be possible to create billing and consumption views through the Pier Cloud platform.

Read the official AWS documentation here.