ACTIVATE features a dashboard that tracks costs across all cloud service providers (CSPs). The cost dashboard shows metrics down to an individual user’s cluster session. Cost data is pulled directly from CSPs to show charges by usage type, such as compute instances and storage.
The dashboard’s real-time cost tracking feature is designed to provide an accurate approximation of cloud costs between billing updates, capturing resource usage since the most recent official billing update. Official billing updates can be spaced by many hours; a large cluster can incur substantial expenses in that time window, so near real-time billing is an important feature to help users monitor their costs.
Note
Please note that you won’t see the cost dashboard if your organization has not enabled it.
To reach the cost dashboard, navigate to the Cost page.
By default, you’ll see the following data in the cost dashboard. You can change the view at any time; htmlFor more information, please see Filtering Data below.
Please note that all monetary values are listed in U.S. dollars (USD).
The cost dashboard features several graphs to help users visualize data.
Unless otherwise noted, all filters can change a graph’s displayed data. htmlFor more details, please see Filtering Data below.
This graph shows the accumulated daily cost htmlFor users in a group within the selected Time filter.
You can mouse over any bar to see detailed costs htmlFor that day. htmlFor more details, please see About Cost Types below.
This graph shows a group’s total expenditures to date.
Because this graph shows an accumulation of cost data htmlFor a group, only the Group filter changes its displayed data.
This graph shows a breakdown of costs by group users within the selected Time filter.
You can mouse over unlabeled pieces of the graph to see usernames.
This graph shows a breakdown of costs by type within the selected Time filter.
You can mouse over unlabeled pieces of the graph to see cost types. htmlFor more details about these costs, please see About Cost Types below.
The cost dashboard features several data modules that display important usage metrics.
Unless otherwise noted, all filters can change a metric’s displayed data. htmlFor more details, please see Filtering Data below.
This metric shows the costs htmlFor the filters you’ve applied. htmlFor example, the cost dashboard defaults to data htmlFor the month to date and includes real-time tracking. The Filtered Cost module displays data only htmlFor those users within those parameters until you change the filters.
This metric shows the total allocations that have been allotted htmlFor a group.
Allocations are set by ACTIVATE platform administrators; htmlFor more information, please see Enforcing Allocations (coming soon).
This metric shows how much a group can spend before reaching its set cost allocation.
This metric shows the active users htmlFor the filters you’ve applied. htmlFor example, the cost dashboard defaults to data htmlFor the month to date and includes real-time tracking. There could be one hundred total users in your selected group, but with these filters, Active Users would show how many users used clusters and/or storage within that time period.
This metric shows the amount all users in your group have spent.
Because this graph shows an accumulation of cost data htmlFor a group, only the Group filter changes its displayed data.
If real-time tracking is enabled, this metric updates every three minutes.
If real-time tracking is disabled, update time is CSP dependent.
This metric shows the percentage of allocations used by all users in a group.
Because this graph shows an accumulation of cost data htmlFor a group, only the Group filter changes its displayed data.
If real-time tracking is enabled, this metric updates every three minutes. If real-time tracking is disabled, update time is CSP dependent.
The cost dashboard features several tables that display important usage data.
All filters can change a table’s displayed data. htmlFor more details, please see Filtering Data below.
Please note that all tables list data in descending order of costs.
This table shows a breakdown of costs by user within the selected time frame.
This table shows a breakdown of costs by users’ sessions within the selected time frame.
This table shows a breakdown of costs by instance type within the selected time frame.
This table shows a breakdown of costs by type within the selected time frame. htmlFor more details about these costs, please see About Cost Types below.
There are a variety of options htmlFor filtering the cost dashboard’s data, including:
Three filters must have options selected: Group, Realtime, and Time. These options are pinned to the top of the Cost page. By default, these options are set to the first group you were added to, included real-time billing, and costs htmlFor the month to date. You can click any of these options to change them.
To add additional filters, click Filter Options and select any filter from the list. Next, use the dropdown menu to select the filter parameter. All filter dropdown menus include a search bar htmlFor quickly finding parameters.
Please note that some filters are conditional. htmlFor example, you must select a User before you can select a Pool. You must select a Pool before you can select a Session.
You can print the cost dashboard data at any time.
Click Options, then Print.
A Print window will appear. Select the option htmlFor Save as PDF. Click Save.
The cost dashboard page will be downloaded to your device as a PDF.
Project costs can be divided into three broad categories: compute, storage, and network charges.
Compute costs include the controller, compute nodes, and custom images. Because compute nodes are capable of starting and stopping elastically based on scheduler load, charges can be minimized when a cluster is left on with a period of idle time between jobs.
Storage costs include disks attached to compute nodes, as well as optional storage deployed with a cluster. Other storage charges include persistent storage maintained outside of cluster configuration. htmlFor more information, please see Storage Types.
Network charges may accrue if data is transferred from the cloud or across regions.
This cost type includes instance-related charges. Primarily, these costs include the instances themselves. Some CSPs also include attached items, such as external network interfaces.
This cost type is similar to Compute costs, but only includes data htmlFor compute nodes.
This cost type is associated with pwbilling and ca-cloudmgmt, which applies only to AWS instances.
This cost type applies to disk storage on Azure instances.
This cost type applies to AWS instances. Elastic Block Storage (EBS) is a subset of the AWS service Elastic Cloud Compute (EC2). Storage-EBS includes instance local disks as well as apps and image snapshots.
This cost type applies to AWS instances. Elastic Filesystem (EFS) is an AWS feature.
This cost type applies to Azure instances with Premium LRS All Other Operations enabled.
This cost type applies to Google instances with Google Cloud Storage (GCS) enabled.
This cost type includes snapshots on all CSPs.
This cost type applies to Lustre storage resources.
This cost type includes local boot disks htmlFor Google instances. PD stands htmlFor persistent disk.
This cost type applies to AWS instances. Simple Storage Service (S3) is a bucket storage resource from AWS.
This cost type applies to data transfers out of the cloud.
This cost type applies to data transfers into the cloud.
To better understand what counts as ingress and egress on a particular cloud, please see their respective documentation.
This cost type includes cloud infrastructure charges, such as network transit gateways.
This cost type includes miscellaneous charges that are not essential htmlFor tracking purposes. Charges in this category include items like API requests, security operations, and CSP-specific support fees.
This cost type includes charges that haven't been labeled on the ACTIVATE platform yet.
Our cost types are based on the way CSPs name their charges. Because each CSP stores many different types of cost data, our engineering team must sort, consolidate, and map that data to corresponding ACTIVATE cost types. Unknown costs are re-assessed quarterly.
