• English
    • Deutsch (German)
    • Français (French)
    • Italiano (Italian)
    • 日本語 (Japanese)
  • Support
  • Login
  • Search
  • Solutions
    • Overview
    • Financial ManagementAnalyze, optimize, & plan technology spend
    • Cloud & HybridOptimize cost & utilization of multi-cloud & on-premises
    • Apps & ServicesRationalize portfolio & invest for growth
    • Vendors & SuppliersGovern your technology vendor portfolio
    • Agile & ProjectsTrack & prioritize investments for value
    • Business ValueShape business demand & recover costs
    • Public Sector ITAlign resources to reduce risk & maximize mission objectives
  • Products
        • PRODUCTS
        • ITFM FoundationAutomate IT financial planning & analysis
        • CloudabilityAllocate & optimize cloud resources
        • Cloudability SaaSIdentify SaaS apps to optimize costs and manage risk
        • Cost TransparencyAggregate & normalize IT cost, performance & utilization
        • Agile Investment ManagementPlan, track, and forecast investments for Agile delivery
        • All Products >
          • Bill of IT
          • Hybrid Business Management
          • IT Benchmarking
          • IT Planning Foundation
          • Vendor Insights
          • Project Financial Planning
        • Platform
        • DatalinkIngest & structure data from over 350 source systems
        • Apptio TBM Unified ModelEmploy best practices for data sources, allocations & KPIs
        • InsightsSurface actionable insights & opportunities hidden in your data
        • Self-Service ReportingUnlock information and share reports across your organization
        • Comments & CollaborationDrive clarity with rich context without leaving the system
        • Action PlansSet, track, & monitor progress toward goals & objectives
  • Resources
        • Overview
        • Testimonials
        • Resource Center
        • Blog
        • Community
        • Support
        • Professional Services
        • Events & Webinars
  • Company
        • Overview
        • Careers
        • Leadership
        • Technology Business Management
        • Trust
        • Partners
        • News
        • Locations
  • Get Started
  • Search
  • Support
  • Login
  • English (English)
    • Deutsch (German)
    • Français (French)
    • Italiano (Italian)
    • 日本語 (Japanese)
Get Started
Apptio Blog

AWS Tags: 3 Simple Rules for Cost Management

  • J.R. Storment
  • June 21, 2013
If you’ve been spending a significant amount of your company’s money on AWS , you’ve probably realized that you’d like to have better insight into where the money is going.  AWS tags can help.  Before you dive into tagging all your instances and S3 buckets though, it’s good to sit down and put together a tagging strategy that satisfies the bean counter requirements and makes sense for Ops.

First rule of AWS tags: Tag across reportable dimensions.

Tags work as a key-value pair.  The key is the “how” you want to report the data, the value is the “what” you want to report on.  The keys ultimately become the columns or dimensions by which you’ll want to break down your AWS cost reports.  Be sure to use reportable dimensions for the keys (like Environment or Product) for the keys that are meaningful for your organization and logically group the parts of your business or platform.

Cldy emerge 2013 06 aws tags1

Second rule of AWS tags: Tag systematically using a consistent nomenclature

Reporting by AWS tags  is like any other kind of reporting; if it’s garbage in, you’ll get garbage out.  It’s important to stay consistent with both the keys and values you use to denote different types of spending.  Some of the more advanced users of tags will settle on a “required” list of 5 tags that all taggable resources should use.  If you use an automated process to deploy AWS resources, you can work it into your workflow to require those tags.  Whether you programmatically tag or do it manually, be sure to narrow in on what tag keys are the most important and be consistent about applying them across your infrastructure.

(Don’t sweat misspellings of keys though; Cloudability’s tag mapping lets you combine multiple keys into one dimension if you come across 5 spellings of a tough one like “envirnoment”…. )

Third rule of AWS tags: Use tags that will answer questions

Here are a few example keys for AWS tags and the types of questions they answer for you:

  1. Cost center: what resources are affecting your your bottom line?
  2. Business Unit: what group/department/division of your organization does this spending fall under?
  3. Service: you may want to track costs of multi-functional projects or services shared across departments, like a logging service or a analytics service.
  4. Product: how much is each of my profit centers costing to operate?
  5. Tier: which part of my app is driving AWS costs— web, app, db, backend, hadoop, auto-scaling, etc?
  6. Version: how do changes to my architecture impact total cost?
  7. Environment: are we leaving things on or over-provisioning for our staging, test or dev environments?
  8. Owner: which individual developer or team is responsible for this spending?

The big takeaway here is that before you can start getting good data out of your cost reports, you need to figure out what’s truly important to report on.  There are a lot of options and I recommend taking a less-is-more approach initially.  Determine which reports you need in order to make decisions that improve the efficiency of your spending, or simply getting the most valuable breakdown regarding where you costs are going.

Article Contents

Categories

  • Cloud

Tags

  • AWS
  • Spend Visibility
Get Started

See These Related Items:

12/18/2020
  • Blog: Cloud

AWS re:Invent: Cloud Adoption Accelerating

Read the Article
12/17/2020
  • Blog: Cloud

Reserved Instance Amortization and MCA Support With New Azure Integration

Andrew Midgley, Isaiah Rendorio & Vasilio Markanastasakis
Read the Article
12/15/2020
  • Blog: Cloud

Apptio Earns Recognition as a Leader in Kubernetes Cost Allocation Solutions

Amanda Mitchell
Read the Article

Get Started

Whether you need help analyzing the true cost of the cloud, optimizing your technology spend, or communicating IT’s value to the business, Apptio can help.

Find a Solution

Request a Demo

Join an Event

Ask a Question

Apptio
Twitter
Linkedin-in
Envelope
  • Solutions
    • Overview
    • Financial Management
    • Cloud & Hybrid
    • Apps & Services
    • Vendors & Suppliers
    • Agile & Projects
    • Business Value
    • Public Sector IT
  • Products
    • PRODUCTS
    • ITFM Foundation
    • Cloudability
    • Cloudability SaaS
    • Cost Transparency
    • Agile Investment Management
    • All Products >
      • Bill of IT
      • Hybrid Business Management
      • IT Benchmarking
      • IT Planning Foundation
      • Vendor Insights
      • Project Financial Planning
    • Platform
    • Datalink
    • Apptio TBM Unified Model
    • Insights
    • Self-Service Reporting
    • Comments & Collaboration
    • Action Plans
  • Resources
    • Overview
    • Testimonials
    • Resource Center
    • Blog
    • Community
    • Support
    • Professional Services
    • Events & Webinars
  • Company
    • Overview
    • Careers
    • Leadership
    • Technology Business Management
    • Trust
    • Partners
    • News
    • Locations
  • Get Started
  • Search
  • Support
  • Login
  • English (English)
    • Deutsch (German)
    • Français (French)
    • Italiano (Italian)
    • 日本語 (Japanese)
Founder and Technical Advisor to the TBM Council

© 2007-2021 Apptio, Inc. All rights reserved. |  Privacy Policy | Modern Slavery Act Statement