What's New

1

Support for Container Cost Insights reports

Cost Center now allows customers to view their container costs by cluster, namespace, workload, region, and cost tag.

Commercial use

Viewing Container Cost Breakdowns

1

The old edition of Cost Center taken offline at the end of November, 2024

The old edition of Cost Center will be taken offline at the end of November, 2024. The new edition of Cost Center inherits all functions from the old edition and also provides more options to manage costs in much easier ways.

Commercial use

Upgrade Description

2

Cost optimization recommendations for changing the billing mode available for all services

Cost Center provides optimization recommendations for changing the billing mode from pay-per-use to yearly/monthly for all services.

Commercial use

Changing Pay-per-Use to Yearly/Monthly

1

Commercial discounts taken into account for changing pay-per-use to yearly/monthly

The monthly amortized costs after optimization are calculated based on the commercial discounts for historical expenditures.

Commercial use

Changing Pay-per-Use to Yearly/Monthly

2

A new menu item for Cost Assistant

A new menu item has been added for Cost Assistant in the navigation pane. Customers can choose Cost Assistant to view the maturity score and cost insights to better manage costs.

Commercial use

Cost Assistant

1

Multi-Dimension MTD Costs reports

Multi-Dimension MTD Costs reports are now available. Customers can now learn about their cost breakdowns and flows in a Sankey diagram.

Commercial use

Viewing Cost Analyses

2

New Getting Started page in Cost Center

The Getting Started page has been added to Cost Center. It helps customers use tools for cloud financial management in four core scenarios. Customers can click the provided links to learn about function details or access the help documentation.

Commercial use

Getting Started page

1

New edition of Cost Center:Easier navigation、Comprehensive cost overview、Scenario-specific cost analysis、Simpler budget creation

1. The navigation menus have been reorganized to streamline the journey of cloud cost management: Cost Insights > Cost Organization > Budget Management > Cost Optimization. The new navigation provides clear direction on where to go to meet customer needs.

2. The overall layout has been optimized to give customers quick convenient view of their costs. Cost Assistant has been rolled out as an all-new feature. It offers maturity scores and insight recommendations to help customers manage costs better.

3. There are a variety of reports recommended for typical cost analysis scenarios. Customers can add certain reports to their favorites for faster cost analysis. On cost analysis pages, browsing views are distinguished from action views, giving customers a better experience.

4. There are a wide range of budget templates available for common scenarios to make budget creation simpler.

Commercial use

Overview

Viewing Cost Analyses

Budgets

1

Support for selecting enterprise projects by linked account

An enterprise master account can select enterprise projects by linked account, except the default enterprise project and those not categorized.

Commercial use

Viewing Cost Analyses

Creating a Budget

Overview of Cost Optimization

Managing Cost Categories

1

Support for cost forecasting in the grace period for yearly/monthly subscriptions

The grace period is considered when original costs of the yearly/monthly subscriptions are forecasted. Such cost forecasting is based on the following assumption: If auto-renewal is not enabled, resources will be renewed within the grace period.

Commercial use

Forecasting

1

Support for hourly cost analysis

In Cost Center, Hourly Cost Analysis is available on the Preferences page. Customers can enable or disable this function.

If customers enable this function, Cost Center will present their original costs by the hour from the last 14 days on the Cost Analysis page.

Commercial use

Viewing Cost Analyses

2

[Cost Optimization Recommendations] Support for resource rightsizing recommendations from OA

After customers enable Optimization Advisor (OA), they can obtain recommendations for rightsizing EIP, ELB, and EVS resources from OA.

Commercial use

Rightsizing EVS

EIP

and ELB Resources

3

Cost categories applicable to historical billing cycles

When customers are creating or editing cost categories, they can configure a look-back period for up to last 12 months.

On the Cost Allocation > Cost Categories page in Cost Center, the following setting is available:

Commercial use

Managing Cost Categories

1

Support for searching resources by name or ID under the Resource Name/ID filter

Customers can search resources by name or ID under the Resource Name/ID filter for cost analysis.

Commercial use

Viewing Cost Analyses

2

Pop-up messages available for reminding customer to verify the email address or mobile number

On the Budgets, Cost Anomaly Detection, Cost Optimization, and Budget Reports pages of Cost Center, if the notification methods configured for alert notifications have not been verified, customers will encounter a pop-up message, reminding them to verify the notification methods. Customers can follow the instructions to verify the email address or mobile number.

Commercial use

Creating a Budget

Configuring Alert Notifications

Cost Optimization Overview

Budget Reports

3

Support for displaying the data export progress

In Cost Center, when customers choose Export History to export a file, they will see the progress bar. After the export is completed, they can click Download in the Operation column to download the file.

Commercial use

Export History

1

Support for exporting cost optimization recommendations

Customers can export all cost optimization recommendations on the Cost Optimization page and determine whether to apply the recommendations in dimensions they select.

Commercial use

Exporting Cost Optimization Recommendations

1

Different recipients configurable for alert notifications with different monitors

Customers now can create alert notifications and specify different recipients for different monitors in the following steps:

1. Log in to Cost Center, choose Cost Anomaly Detection > Alert Notifications, and click Create Notification in the upper right corner of the page.

2. Configure notification details and specify notification recipients.

Commercial use

Enabling Alerts

2

Support for Compute Savings Plans

Cost Center now provides recommendations for purchasing Compute Savings Plans based on historical pay-per-use expenditures. It also provides the estimated commitment value that will bring the largest savings.

Commercial use

Purchasing Savings Plans

1

Generated costs taken into account for calculating the current-month forecasted cost

On the Overview and Cost Analysis pages, cost data is now collected by the day to improve the accuracy of cost forecasting. In addition, the current-month forecasted cost is now calculated by adding together the actual cost generated in the past days of the month and the forecasted cost in the coming days of the month.

Commercial use

Forecasting

2

UX optimization for Cost Anomaly Detection

1. On the Cost Anomaly Detection page in Cost Center, the Cost Anomaly Detection Summary area is now provided to show the number of anomalies pending feedback, the number of cost anomalies from the last 30 days, and the cost impact from the last 30 days.

2. In the Feedback area, the Reasons field has been added for customers to select specific anomaly reasons.

Commercial use

Viewing Anomaly History

1

Support for custom display of Top 5 Costs By MoM Growth ($) on the Cost Center overview page

On the Overview page in Cost Center, when customers click Select Dimensions in the Top 5 Costs by MoM Growth area, they can toggle on or off the switches to show or hide the dimensions, drag and drop them to change the order they are displayed in, and choose which cost tag or cost category is by default displayed to group costs.

Commercial use

Overview

2

Integration of cost optimization recommendations

When customers log in to Cost Center and choose Cost Optimization, all of the cost optimization recommendations and estimated savings are displayed. Currently, only billing mode change opportunities are available. Customers can locate a specific cost optimization opportunity and click View Details in the Operation column to view its details. They can optimize the costs for the applicable resources as needed.

Commercial use

Cost Optimization Overview

3

Uncategorized costs available for cost category rules involving enterprise projects

When customers log in to Cost Center to create or update a cost category, if they select Enterprise Project as a condition for creating a rule, Not categorized is included as an option.

Commercial use

Cost Category Management

4

Support for cost amortization in Whole Site Acceleration (WSA)

On the Preferences page in Cost Center, when customers enable cost splitting, WSA costs can be split. WSA expenditures billed by traffic, 95 peak bandwidth, or daily average peak bandwidth, together with value-added service expenditures billed by the number of requests, can be split by domain name. In addition to enterprise project for a specific domain name, the costs can also be split by cost tag for the domain name.

Commercial use

Enabling Cost Splitting

5

List price used as the basis for calculating the cost recommendations of changing pay-per-use to yearly/monthly

In Cost Center, the cost optimization recommendations for changing pay-per-use to yearly/monthly are all calculated based on the list price, without taking commercial discounts into account. They may differ from actual payments and are provided solely for reference.

Commercial use

Yearly/Monthly Subscriptions

6

[Support for enterprise project-specific cost management] Changing the billing mode from pay-per-use to yearly/monthly

When customers log in to Cost Center and choose Cost Optimization > Yearly/Monthly Subscriptions, they can view the newly added filter Enterprise Project. With this filter, customers can search or filter the cost optimization options of changing pay-per-use to yearly/monthly by enterprise project.

Commercial use

Yearly/Monthly Subscriptions

1

Support for creating savings plan utilization and coverage budgets

Customers can create savings plan utilization and coverage budget in Cost Center.

1. Log in to Cost Center and choose Budgets > Create Budget. Then, select Savings plan utilization budget and Savings plan coverage budget.

2. Set the budget details.

3. Add recipients to receive alerts when the savings plan utilization and coverage thresholds are reached.

Commercial use

Creating a Budget

2

Support for unified cost management of savings plans with unified accounting

• Effects of switching between enterprise master and member accounts on amortized costs of savings plans: Costs are amortized based on the billing cycle. If the master and member accounts are switched on the current day, the amortized costs are allocated to different accounts by hour and proportion.

  For example: If the amortized cost of a savings plan is $240 USD per day and the member account is disassociated from the master account and becomes an individual account at 03:15 on a day, the amortized cost of the master account on the day is 240 x (3/24) = $20 USD, and the amortized cost of the individual customer is = 240 x (21/24) = $220 USD.

• Effects of switching between enterprise master and member accounts on the utilization and coverage of savings plans:

  • The master account owner can use the filter Linked Account to select specific member accounts and analyze the utilization and coverage of the savings plans used by the member accounts during unified accounting management. The master account owner is not allowed to access member accounts' data for savings plans used when the accounts were not associated for unified accounting.

  • Member accounts can view only the savings plan utilization and coverage during the association period. If they are no longer associated with the master account and have become individual customers, they will be able to access the savings plan utilization and coverage data during the disassociation period but not those data during the association period.

Commercial use

Cost Management for Enterprises

3

Support for sharing savings plans benefits between enterprise master and member accounts

When customers log in to Cost Center as the enterprise master account, they can view savings plan recommendations by organization based on historical expenditures within the sharing scope of the master and member accounts.

Customers can choose Savings Plans > Recommendations > Recommendation Level to view recommendations by organization or account.

● Organization: Recommendations are generated at the management account level. They consider usage across all member accounts in the organization.

● Account: Recommendations are generated for the individual account or at the member account level under unified accounting management.

Commercial use

Following Cost Optimization Recommendations

4

Support for savings plan utilization analysis

When customers log in to Cost Center and choose Savings Plans > Analysis > Savings Plan Utilization, they can view the utilization of savings plans within a specified period, including the total savings, pay-per-use cost equivalent, and amount deducted from the savings plan.

Open beta testing

Viewing Utilization and Coverage

5

Support for savings plan coverage analysis

When customers log in to the Cost Center and choose Savings Plans > Analysis > Savings Plan Coverage, they can view the coverage of savings plans within the specified period. Savings plan coverage = Amount deducted from the savings plan/(Amount deducted from the savings plan + Cost of eligible usage not covered by the savings plan) x 100%

Open beta testing

Viewing Utilization and Coverage

6

Support for changing from yearly/monthly to pay-per-use

In Cost Center, Refund-change to pay-per-use is included in Bill Type on the pages for cost analysis, budget management, and cost categories.

Commercial use

Viewing Cost Analyses

1

Support for Huawei Cloud Savings Plans

Huawei Cloud offers Savings Plans, a new pricing model. ECS Savings Plans are currently available. Customers can get lower prices in exchange for a commitment to use a specified amount of resources (measured in USD/hour) for a one- or three-year term. Customers' hourly usage covered by the savings plan commitment will be billed only the hourly commitment at a discounted rate, while the hourly usage beyond the commitment will be billed at the standard rate. 

Open beta testing

Huawei Cloud Savings Plans

2

Navigation menus adjusted

Cost Center navigation menus are adjusted to show cost optimization recommendations and cost allocation tools more distinctly.

Commercial use

Introduction

3

Cost Center overview upgraded for better user experience

The new Overview page gives a quick overview of the current month costs, cost optimization recommendations, cost anomalies identified, and budgets.

Commercial use

Overview

4

Enterprise projects without any expenditures available for cost category rules

When you define cost category rules, you can now select enterprise projects that have not incurred any expenditures.

Commercial use

Cost Category Management

5

Operations in Cost Center interconnected to CTS

1. With Cloud Trace Service (CTS), the key operations in Cost Center can be reported to CTS for further query, audit, and backtracking.

2. When you log in to the CTS console, you can filter Cost Center operations by Trace Source and Resource Type to view the operation records for the last seven days.

Commercial use

Supported Cost Center Operations

1

Abbreviations added for cloud service names

On the Cost Analysis page of Cost Center, abbreviations are now provided for the cloud service names displayed in the Cloud Service column when cost data is grouped by usage type, resource name/ID, or specifications.

Note: Abbreviations are displayed only when available.

Commercial use

Viewing Cost Analyses

2

Maximum number of filtering items changed

On the Cost Analysis and Budgets page of Cost Center, customers can now select up to 20 items for a level-1 option and up to 50 items for a level-2 option at a time under the filter Cost Category or Cost Tag.

Commercial use

Quotas and Restrictions

1

URL shortened to easily share cost analysis reports

The URL length for Share Link on the Cost Analysis page is shortened, with only necessary parameter information included.

Commercial use

Viewing Cost Analyses

2

Shared CDN costs split by cost tag for a specific domain name

When customers enable cost splitting in Cost Center, they can split CDN costs by domain name if the CDN resources are billed by traffic, 95 peak bandwidth, or daily average peak bandwidth. As of May, 2023, in addition to enterprise project for a specific domain name, the costs can also be split by cost tag for the domain name.

Suppose you changed the tag value of CDN resources from N to M on April 9, 2023. If you want to split costs on May 4, 2023, the amortized costs for April would be attributed to tag M.

Commercial use

Enabling Cost Splitting

1

Shared costs split by domain name during unified accounting management

During unified accounting management, member accounts can enable cost splitting.

Commercial use

Cost Management for Enterprises

2

Display style adjusted for cost analysis

The following optimizations are incorporated into the Cost Analysis page in Cost Center.

1. The filter Specification Code is renamed Specifications and Resource is renamed Resource Name/ID.

2. The filters Specifications, Usage Type, Cost Tag, and Cost Category support two-level filtering.

3. The columns Total, Accrued Total, and Forecast Total in the table are moved to the left of the columns indicating time ranges.

4. When costs are grouped by specifications, resource name/ID, or usage type, the Cloud Service column is provided to help identify which cloud service has incurred the cost.

5. The following optimizations are also incorporated into the exported file:

   (1) The columns Total, Accrued Total, and Forecast Total are moved to the left of the columns indicating time ranges.

   (2) When costs are grouped by usage type, the column Usage Type (amount unit/usage unit) is displayed.

   (3) When costs are grouped by resource name/ID, the columns Resource Name and Resource ID are displayed.

   (4) When costs are grouped by specifications, resource name/ID, usage type, the Cloud Service column is displayed as the second column to help identify which cloud service has incurred the cost.

Commercial use

Viewing Cost Analyses

3

RI usage details available for export

Customers can export RI usage details by performing the following steps:

1. Log in to Cost Center, choose Billing Mode > Reserved Instances > RI utilization. On the upper right corner, click Download RI Usage.

2. Specify the period and data scope for exporting RI usage details, and then click OK.

Commercial use

Reserved Instances

1

More filtering items allowed

The maximum number of filtering items has been increased to 50 on the Cost Analysis, Budgets, and Reserved Instances page.

Commercial use

Viewing Cost Analyses

2

Cost amortization rules changed for yearly/monthly unsubscription orders

On and after February 1, 2023 GMT+08:00, both the refund and the unallocated fee of a yearly/monthly unsubscription order are recorded as the amortized cost for the unsubscription day. For orders unsubscribed from before February 1, 2023, the unallocated fee is recorded as the amortized cost for February 1, 2023.

Commercial use

Cost Breakdown Rules

3

Support for cost management by enterprise project

If customers want to group costs by enterprise project, they can create monitors of the Enterprise Projects type to track pay-per-use and yearly/monthly expenditure anomalies.

Commercial use

Overview

1

Satisfaction surveys available for downloading cost analyses and cost details

When customers download cost analysis results or cost details on the Cost Analysis page, they will see a satisfaction survey.

Commercial use

Viewing Cost Analyses

2

Predefined tags available for activating

On the Cost Tags page, predefined tags created using TMS are available for activating. There are two types of tags:

● Expenditure tags: Customers add such tags when creating resources. They will appear on the Cost Tags page 24 hours after their associated resources have generated expenditures.

● Predefined tags: Customers create such tags on the TMS console. They appear on the Cost Tags page immediately after being created. After you activate them, Cost Center starts applying them to cost data.

Commercial use

Activating Cost Tags

3

Weekly alerts available

When customers configure alerts on the Cost Anomaly Detection > Anomaly History page, they have the following two options for alert frequency:

● Daily: Alert summaries for each day will be sent to recipients at the specified time next day.

● Weekly: Alert summaries for each week will be sent to recipients at the specified time next Tuesday.

Commercial use

Enabling Alert

1

Cost Anomaly Detection available for yearly/monthly subscriptions

On the Cost Anomaly Detection page in Cost Center, both pay-per-use and yearly/monthly expenditures can be monitored, and the monitoring focuses on the actual payments instead of payable amounts.

Commercial use

Cost Anomaly Detection

1

Abbreviations displayed for service types

Abbreviations are displayed for service types in Cost Center.

Commercial use

Viewing Cost Analyses

1

Link sharing supported for cost analysis

On the Cost Analysis page in Cost Center, if users click Share Link, the URL will be copied to the clipboard. If an overlong URL cannot be fully copied, users can click Save Report in the upper right corner and then view the report on the Reports page.

Commercial use

Viewing Cost Analyses

2

Option for hiding service types with $0 total cost

Log in to Partner Center and go to the Cost Analysis page. Select Hide service types with $0 total cost to filter out the invalid information (costs of service types with $0 total cost).

Commercial use

Viewing Cost Analyses

1

Splitting rules can be modified for historical costs

Log in to Cost Center and view the details of a cost category. The splitting rules for the cost data of last three months as well as the current month can be modified.

Commercial use

Viewing Cost Category Details

2

CDN costs can be split.

For resources that are used by multiple domain names, you can enable cost splitting to split the costs by tag or enterprise project configured for the domain names.

Commercial use

Enabling Cost Splitting

3

Costs of up to last 30 days or last three months can be analyzed by resource on a daily or monthly basis.

View costs by resource on the Cost Analysis page.

● If you choose to analyze costs by resource on a monthly basis, the analysis result of costs for up to last three months is displayed.

● If you choose to analyze costs by resource on a daily basis, the analysis result of costs for up to last 30 days is displayed.

Commercial use

Viewing Cost Analyses

4

Dynamic budgeting is supported.

You can select Dynamic for Budgeted Amount Plan only when Reset Period is Monthly or Quarterly. Because your dynamic budget depends on your cost data, your upcoming budget amounts can fluctuate as your costs change. We will notify all alert recipients when we adjust your budget amount on the 5th day of each month or quarter.

Commercial use

Baseline Time Ranges

1

Cost categories available for grouping costs

A cost category is a tool that can automatically group you costs based on the rules. A cost category automatically groups you costs based on the rules you configure, such as linked account, service type, bill type, cost tag, and enterprise project, or even the custom rules configured for other cost categories.

Commercial use

Overview

2

Forecasted costs displayed along the specified dimension

When you use different dimensions to analyze cost distributions in stacked charts, you can view both actual and forecasted costs by specifying a time range starting with a past time and ending with a future time.

Commercial use

Forecasting Usage and Constraints

3

Original cost details can be exported.

Reflects the original costs for purchased and used resources. For details about the description of the fields in the exported file, see Fields in Exported Original Cost Details.

Commercial use

Exporting Original Cost Details

1

Forecasting enabled by default

Cost and usage forecasting is enabled by default.

Commercial use

Forecasting

2

Cost categories in OBT

A cost category automatically groups you costs based on the rules you configure, such as linked account, service type, bill type, cost tag, and enterprise project, or even the custom rules configured for other cost categories.

Commercial use

Overview

3

List price-based cost analysis

If you set Cost Type to Original costs on the Cost Analysis page, you can choose to select Include discount. Both discount and truncated amount will be included if you select this option, and the cost is equal to the list price.

Commercial use

Viewing Cost Analyses

4

Alert and feedback

• Alert Triggered Upon Cost Anomaly Detected: After you enable the alert, the system notifies designated individuals by email based on your configured alert frequency if an anomaly is detected.
• Feedback for Cost Anomaly Detection Result: You can provide your feedback on cost anomaly detection results.

Commercial use

Enabling Alert

1

Cost management by using RI utilization and coverage

You can track the utilization or coverage of a specified reserved instance and receive an alert if the utilization or coverage is lower than the budget threshold you define.

Commercial use

Reserved Instances

1

Cost and usage forecasting

Forecasting is based on your historical costs and usage on Huawei Cloud. To monitor your budgets, you can enable forecasting to estimate your future costs and usage, and then configure budget alerts based on the forecasts produced.

Commercial use

Enabling Forecasting

2

Cost anomaly detection

Cost Anomaly Detection leverages machine learning to analyze your historical pay-per-use expenditures, establish a specific expenditure model for you, and identify root causes for cost surprises based on forecasted amounts. With simple steps, Cost Anomaly Detection helps you quickly take action based on detected cost anomalies to maintain your planned expenditures.

Commercial use

Cost Anomaly Detection

3

Optimization by changing the billing mode from pay-per-use to yearly/monthly

You can analyze the usage of your pay-per-use ECS, EVS, and RDS resources in Cost Center. Cost Center provides optimization options based on these analyses, identifying places where you can save money by changing the billing mode from pay-per-use to yearly/monthly.

Commercial use

Yearly/Monthly Subscriptions

1

Analysis of cost data of members associated with master account owners (non-unified accounting management)

Master account owners who have not enabled unified accounting management can access the following data in Cost Center:

• Your own cost and usage data
• Cost and usage data of your member accounts during the payment association period
• Cost and usage data of your member accounts who have authorized you to view their expenditure data

Commercial use

Viewing Cost Analyses

1

First official release

Cost Center offers a suite of tools for free that help you track, analyze, and explore your Huawei Cloud costs and usage.

Commercial use

Introduction