Flexible Allocation System

The flexible allocation system is how ACTIVATE budgets cloud spend: shareable allocations (budgets) and user-owned resource groups that decide which allocation pays for each resource. It replaces the legacy system of per-group allocations, and it's the system the rest of these docs describe. This page is for admins switching over: it compares the two systems, explains what changes, and shows how to turn the flexible system on.

Legacy vs. flexible

Both pipelines keep importing cloud costs, so switching systems doesn't lose cost data.

How costs reach an allocation

Cloud charges find their allocation through the resource that incurred them, as described in Cost Attribution. Kubernetes namespaces, AI requests on organization providers, and usage events bill an allocation directly. Each allocation's Used and Estimated amounts are compared with your organization's thresholds every few minutes.

What changes for users

• Create forms show a required Resource group field instead of Billing group. Resources can't start without a resource group.
• Only cloud resources go into resource groups. Kubernetes namespaces, AI requests, and usage events bill allocations directly.
• A resource group's allocation can be changed at any time. Its allocation history keeps every cost on the allocation that was active when the cost was incurred.
• The Resource groups, Allocations, and Reports pages appear in the sidebar. Reports opens the Allocation Cost Dashboard, which charts each allocation's spend by type, user, or SKU, with real-time estimates.
• Enforcement comes from the allocation behind the resource's resource group. New work is blocked for every resource group it funds when the allocation has no budget, has used its whole budget, is past a freeze threshold, or has no period that covers today. An allocation that isn't chargeable can't be picked for a resource group; pick one of its sub-allocations instead.
• Session cost limits on clusters are checked against the resource group's allocation, and cannot exceed its budget.

See Resource Groups & Allocations for the user guide.

What changes for admins

• The Groups page no longer shows the Allocation used and Allocation columns or Edit allocations. Budgets are managed on Allocations.
• Reservations map capacity reservation IDs to allocations instead of groups.
• Each cloud account can have a Default Allocation for charges that don't belong to any resource group.
• Deleting a group keeps the allocation that was created for it, because resource groups may still bill it.

Enabling the flexible allocation system

From the Organizations list, select your organization. In the sidebar, under Settings, click Policies. In the Billing and allocations section, set Flexible allocation system to Flexible allocation system, then click Save.

The change applies immediately; users see the new forms without reloading. If a platform administrator has already set this policy at the platform level, the control is disabled for your organization. See Organization Policies.

Setup checklist

1. Provision billing on your cloud accounts if you haven't already, and on AWS activate the cost allocation tags the platform uses. See Provisioning Billing.
2. Create allocations for your projects or budgets, and set each one's Total, or a budget for each allocation period. To split a budget, create allocations under a parent that isn't chargeable. See Creating an allocation.
3. Share allocations with the groups that should bill them, at the Use level. Users can't create resource groups until at least one allocation is shared with them.
4. Set thresholds so users are notified, and optionally frozen or shut down, as allocations fill up. See Allocation Thresholds.
5. Set billing policies: an allocation start date for your fiscal year, allocation periods if your budgets are time-bound, and a default billing username for untagged cloud costs.
6. Set a Default Allocation on each cloud account for charges that no resource group owns, such as support, tax, and untagged resources. See Cost Attribution.
7. Map capacity reservations to allocations under Cloud > Reservations.
8. Enable the policy. Resources created under the legacy system usually already bill an auto-managed resource group. Any that don't show Required to start until their owner assigns one.