User Cost Attribution Diagnostics
The purpose of this document is to help you understand the health checks Nerdio Manager performs and what they mean. Please see the various sections below for each Subscription Permission.
Note: For additional information about required permissions, see User Cost Attribution Overview.
To view the user cost attribution diagnostics:
Navigate to Settings > Integrations.
In the User cost attribution tile, select Diagnostics.
Optionally, you may perform any of the following functions:
Export: Select this option to export the diagnostics to a JSON file.
Rerun Diagnostics: Select this option to rerun the diagnostics.
Report Configurations: Expand any of the entries to see its details.
Subscription Permissions
Cost
This is the cost data Nerdio Manager fetches from the Azure Cost Management, and is used to inform that reporting of the cost of VMs used by the users, as well as any resources tagged and included in the report. All cost data for the selected subscription(s) filter down to the tagged resources during the report build.
This is the most essential data we need to fetch, because without it we don't have any costs to attribute to users. If the status indicates a failure, then it likely means we don't have API permissions to access cost data, and the reports would fail to show any costs.
Host Pool
This is a check to confirm we have visibility on host pool data within your subscription. If we are able to capture host pool data, then we can evaluate costs, VMs, and sessions in the context of host pools, in addition to our per-user costs, and we can identify whether session hosts are personal or pooled.
Without this data, the report won't offer a breakdown or summation of costs and sessions relative to host pools, and all costs would be treated as pooled.
Usage
This is a check to confirm we have access to the usage data for a given subscription. From the usage data we retrieve, we only consider the Resource ID of a VM and the duration that VM was online for. This data provides important context for our reporting, because total VM uptime is used to decide how allocated session costs are portioned and distributed among individual users.
If we are not able to fetch usage data, and Log Analytics Workspace heartbeat data, then it negatively affects the cost allocation of all the reports, resulting in some users being incorrectly allocated a higher/lower portion of costs than normal.
Log Analytics Workspace (LAW) Heartbeat
Notes:
Microsoft will soon be deprecating the Azure consumption details API. Nerdio User Cost Attribution will exclusively make use of the LAW heartbeat data in future. For more information on the API deprecation, refer to Microsoft Cost Management automation FAQ - Microsoft Cost Management | Microsoft Learn.
For guidance on configuring Nerdio Manager’s Heartbeat function, see User Cost Attribution Migrate to Heartbeat-based Data.
This is a check to confirm that Nerdio Manager has access "heartbeat" data from your LAW. Similar to usage, it is used to inform the report of how long VMs were online and helps decide how shared/unallocated costs are distributed in proportional/pro-rata reports.
If this data is available, it is used instead of the usage data, because it is much more streamlined, and significantly improves build times in larger environments.
This requires permissions to read your log analytics workspace, but errors also occur if there is no heartbeat data in the workspace, which can be affected by retention settings.
Tags
Note: The Network category may include bandwidth costs for many different resource types, including disks, VMs, app services, and storage accounts.
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