Control Cloud Costs and Build a FinOps Culture with Grafana
Tags: cloud, devops, kubernetes
Published: 2022-06-22 07:04:24

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<p>Before the cloud, engineers could only dream about allocating servers without involving anyone on the business side of things. Today, they can spin up a virtual instance in a few minutes without consulting anyone.</p>
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<p>No wonder engineers aren’t used to adding costs into the equation, especially when they have other competing priorities.&nbsp;</p>
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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-style-plain"><p><strong>Building a solid FinOps culture and incentivizing all cloud users to participate in cloud cost management is a key step - and challenge - to cloud cost control.&nbsp;</strong></p></blockquote>
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<p>The monitoring and observability tool <strong>Grafana</strong> can help you tackle it if you find a way to bring cost data into it (spoiler alert: we found it at CAST AI).&nbsp;</p>
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<p>Keep on reading to learn why adding cost insights to Grafana is worth the effort and how to do that.</p>
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<h2 id="3-ways-to-keep-your-cloud-costs-in-check-with-grafana">3 ways to keep your cloud costs in check with Grafana</h2>
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<h3 id="1-see-which-workloads-are-costing-you-way-too-much">1. See which workloads are costing you way too much</h3>
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<p>Dealing with shared costs is the <strong><a href="https://data.finops.org/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">second biggest challenge</a></strong> teams face today. This is especially true in cloud-native environments like Kubernetes.</p>
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<p>But a good cost reporting solution paired with Grafana offers a way out.</p>
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<p>CAST AI allows you to allocate cloud costs at the level of namespace, label, and workload. You can easily<strong> <a href="https://docs.cast.ai/guides/metrics/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">integrate cluster metrics with Grafana</a></strong> to create a handy dashboard that lets you check the cost per workload and link it to a specific team within seconds.&nbsp;</p>
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<p>This will save you when workload expenses start spiraling out of control, and you need to remediate the situation as quickly as possible.</p>
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<p>Here’s what an example dashboard looks like with CAST AI metrics on it:</p>
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<figure class="wp-block-image"><img src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/2_7XTsRGWzc7L0J5I8c2i-faf8IeS0ktH_XnNYUtWjSCb5vrAIquJ3o6znNwIwB-fPQlJqHGPoM3soBKdSqbKyFtXuz4wI8Fv1oX_7R8tOPuoyv7-HU_54N_Jess4B3jvxDLCFk8AB6Xrnn66A" alt=""/></figure>
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<h3 id="2-get-alerts-about-cost-spikes-in-real-time">2. Get alerts about cost spikes in real time</h3>
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<p>Nobody has the time to constantly keep an eye on the infrastructure.&nbsp;</p>
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<p>But what if a team member leaves a job running for way longer than it should? You might end up with <strong>a surprise cloud bill of over $500k</strong> as <a href="https://www.teampay.co/insights/manage-cloud-costs/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Adobe</a> did. Or burn $72k on testing one thing for just a few hours like the Silicon Valley startup <a href="https://blog.tomilkieway.com/72k-1/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Milkie Way</a>. One alert acting on real-time usage and cost data could have prevented this.</p>
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<p>If you integrate real-time cost data into Grafana, you can <strong>set usage/cost thresholds and get alerts</strong> every time your Kubernetes cluster cost goes above it.&nbsp;</p>
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<p>You’ll never be caught by surprise when checking your bill at the end of the month, and your CFO will sleep better at night.</p>
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<h3 id="3-spread-cost-awareness-across-your-teams">3. Spread cost awareness across your teams</h3>
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<p><a href="https://data.finops.org/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">The State of FinOps</a> survey revealed that <strong>getting engineers to act on cost optimization recommendations </strong>is a top FinOps-related difficulty for almost 40% of respondents - regardless of their maturity level.</p>
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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-style-plain"><p><strong>By adding cost metrics to Grafana - an industry-standard tool most teams use today - you’re making them easily accessible. Engineers are using Grafana for monitoring and observability anyway. What’s one more dashboard?&nbsp;</strong></p></blockquote>
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<p>That way, you’re not forcing anyone to switch context and work with another tool on top of the dozens they’re already using, just to check how much their cluster costs.&nbsp;</p>
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<p>If you’re taking the first steps towards building a FinOps culture at your company, I shared a few tips on how to <a href="https://cast.ai/blog/how-to-convince-your-dev-team-that-cloud-cost-management-is-important/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">convince your dev team that cloud cost management is important</a>.</p>
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<p><strong>But here’s the best part: bringing cost data to Grafana works like a shortcut.&nbsp;</strong></p>
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<p>That’s why we built the capability of moving cost metrics from CAST AI to Grafana via Prometheus.&nbsp;</p>
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<p>CAST AI is an autonomous Kubernetes solution that helps to keep cloud costs in check. You can try it out by getting a free Savings Report.</p>
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