User Cost Attribution Report Validation Tool

Starting with Nerdio Manager 6.0.1, User Cost Attribution has a Report Validation tool.

Running the Report Validation tool performs an analysis of the cost and session data in your report, and generates a file summarizing that information.

The data in this file includes information such as total costs, filters impacting the costs, resources excluded by the filters, filtered vs unfiltered costs, and more. This information can also be compared against the unfiltered subscription cost in cost management to identify if there are any discrepancies and help highlight where those discrepancies come from.

Generate the Report Validation File

The following procedure allows you to generate the report validation file.

To generate the user cost attribution report validation file:

1. Navigate to Settings > Integrations.

   

2. In the User cost attribution tile, select Report validation.

   

3. Enter the following information:

   Note: Configure the validation to run against the same configuration, month, and report type that you have concerns about. You can cross-reference these details on the User Cost Attribution Dashboard.

   • Configuration: From the drop-down list, select the desired configuration.

   • Month: Select the month.

   • Report type: From the drop-down list, select the report type.

4. Once you have entered the desired information, select Run.

5. Follow the task's progress in Settings Tasks.

   

6. Once the task is complete, select Details.

7. In the task details, select Download validation results.

   

Work with the Report Validation File

The validation file contains a large amount of cost, session, and resource data, that are all useful in verifying your report.

This data is split between the following main categories:

• Raw data: This represents all cost and session data as they are sourced from your Azure environment, and before they are processed into the final report. This also includes costs before and after filters (tags) have been applied.

• Calculated data: This represents the cost and session data after they have been processed into the final report that you see in the main Cost Attribution dashboard.

When validating your costs, the most important metrics/fields to focus on are:

Unfiltered Raw Cost

Filtered Raw Cost

Calculated Cost

These costs are important for confirming that the report is accurately recording all expected costs from Azure Cost Management, correctly filtering those costs, and distributing all remaining costs to users without dropping any. That is, the Unfiltered Raw Cost is expected to always exactly align with the unfiltered subscription cost in Cost Management, and the Filtered Raw Cost should equal the Calculated Cost.

If there are any discrepancies in these fields, then there a few suggested actions to begin investigating and remediating.

Suggested Discrepancy Checks

The following discrepancy checks should be performed.

Does the Raw Unfiltered Cost in UCA = Unfiltered Subscription Cost

• If yes, the UCA is correctly fetching all costs from Azure. This is not causing a discrepancy.

• If no, the UCA is not fetching all costs from Azure. To investigate why, do the following:

  • Rebuild the report and rerun the validation.

  • Create a new configuration targeting the same subscriptions, build the report for the same month, and rerun the validation.

  • Contact support for help investigating the issue. See Refer to Support for details.

Does the Raw Filtered Cost in UCA = Calculated Cost

• If yes, the UCA is correctly processing costs without dropping any. This is not causing a discrepancy.

• If no, the UCA is dropping costs during processing. Contact support for further assistance. See Refer to Support for details.

  Note: You may also compare the ‘filteredResourceGroupCosts’ against the ‘Calculated-ResourceGroupCosts’ to identify how many resource groups this affects.

Are my filters applied correctly? Some resources/costs are not in my final report?

• Review tag filters applied to the configuration, and compare to the tags on the resources in Azure.

• Refer to the ‘UnfilteredResources’ section for a list of the resources that were excluded due to not meeting filter requirements.

  

• If some resources are correctly tagged/meet filter requirements but are being excluded from the final report, please contact support for assistance investigating. See Refer to Support for details.

Refer to Support

If there are discrepancies in the report that would like to raise with support and get assistance in resolving, then there are several items we suggest preparing to help expedite the process.

Validation file

Refer to the above sections for guidance.

Export of subscription costs from Microsoft Cost Management in Azure

1. In the Azure portal, navigate to Cost analysis.

2. Select the Cost by Resource view.

3. Ensure the scope is set to the subscription you want to cost.

4. Set the time frame to the full month matching the validation file.

5. Select Download.

6. In the window that opens, select the Excel option.

7. Select Download data.

Diagnostics file

1. In Nerdio Manager, navigate to Settings > Integrations.

2. In the User cost attribution tile, select Diagnostics.

3. Select Export.

   Note: See User Cost Attribution Diagnostics for full details.

Anonymized export of your raw report data (Optional)

1. In Nerdio Manager, navigate to Settings > Integrations.

2. In the User cost attribution tile, select Share raw report data.

   

3. Enter the following information:

   • Configuration: From the drop-down list, select the desired configuration.

   • Month: Select the month.

   • Anonymize data: If this option is selected, all resource IDs are replaced with randomly generated strings.

     Note: The duration of this operation depends on amount of data in the report, and may take a while.

4. Once you have entered the desired information, select Generate SAS URL.

5. Either share the SAS URL, or download the files from the Azure Storage account and share.