Collie: Open-source CLI for managing AWS, Azure & GCP
Tags: cloud, azure, googlecloud, aws
Published: 2021-07-26 08:43:04

If you've been in touch with meshcloud, you'll know that we love sheep. And that's because clouds and sheep have a lot in common: 

- They love to be free, rather than locked in a barn
- They love to be together, rather than wandering alone
- And they need a shepherd, to protect them from lurking dangers

With Collie, we're launching an open-source CLI tool that helps you as an enterprise architect or platform engineer to assume your shepherd responsibilities, giving you the control to steer your flock towards the next pasture.
![Collie open-source CLI for Cloud Governance](https://www.meshcloud.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Collie-Logo-Blue-Idea-02-300x300.png)

More specifically, Collie enables you to: 

- **View all cloud tenants in one single overview** - View your AWS Accounts, Azure Subscriptions, and Google Cloud Projects with their metadata with only one command.
- **View billing information across all clouds** - See what you spend per day, month, or week in all cloud platforms, including the right metadata. Includes support for CSV, YML and JSON.
- **Analyze tag inconsistencies** - See at a glance what tags are used, by which tenants (and which not), and what potential inconsistencies are in place to fix any governance issues.
- **Track your cloud history** - Collie CLI is built on the principles of GitOps and its data can easily be written to git repositories for tracking changes in your cloud environments.

The development is based on our in-depth experience with meshStack: Our multi-cloud governance platform for the enterprise. It provides you with an easy and lightweight entry to cloud governance. 

Let's have a look into Collie and how it empowers you to manage your multi-cloud landscape!

## Is your Cloud Landscape a Mess?

Did you ever get the feeling that you are losing track of what is happening in your cloud landscape? You have multiple environments (AWS accounts, Azure Subscriptions, or GCP projects) running across different clouds. They started as playgrounds and now more and more serious stuff is running in there, making it harder to keep track every day.  

*Your sheep are basically wandering off from the flock.*

No matter which cloud you use: AWS, Azure, or GCP, they all provide capabilities on the org-level to see what cloud environments are running in there, and what costs they cause. 

What is missing though is a comprehensive overview. It's all hidden behind different screens and settings, across multiple cloud consoles or CLIs, not allowing you to get that single picture you're looking for.

## Cloud Transparency is Key!

For a proper overview, you would need to have different types of information, consolidated in a single view. It could be fairly easy, all you need are answers to these questions:

- Which cloud environments do exist in my multi-cloud landscape?
- Who do these cloud environments belong to?
- What costs do these cloud environments cause?
- Are they consistently tagged and documented?

Having this information at hand, enables you to bring things into order (= Cloud Governance) and herd your sheep.

## Collie – Open-Source Multi-Cloud CLI Tool

This has never been as easy. All you need, is to have the native cloud CLI tools installed on your machine. From there it's just a couple of commands to shed light into the dark.

See for yourself:
![Collie CLI Demo](https://www.meshcloud.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/collie-demo.gif)

If you are wondering how to use that information, here are some common use cases that people implement with Collie. 

1) You want to delete cloud environments that aren't used anymore to reduce complexity.

2) You want to implement a consistent tagging strategy and need to know which cloud environments are still missing 

3) You want to make sure that there are no idle environments (Sandboxes, etc.) raising your cloud bills every month

4) You want to implement a consistent tagging strategy and need to know which tags are currently used within your cloud environments

5) You want to map cloud environments to IT products, applications or cost centers within your organization

6) You want to analyze cloud costs based on their tags to build multi-cloud cost reports with nice dashboarding tools like PowerBI or Google Data Studio

## How to get started with Collie

If you're looking for full transparency on your growing cloud landscape, Collie is just right for you.
Collie is open-source and [available on GitHub](https://github.com/meshcloud/collie-cli). You only need to have the native cloud CLIs installed on your machine and are ready to go. 

We hope you find it useful. [Please reach out with any contributions, feedback, ideas or requests for help](https://github.com/meshcloud/collie-cli/discussions). 

We're looking forward to herding our clouds together.