Configuration
Supported Currencies
In order to simplify multi-cloud governance, cloud foundation teams should prefer standardising on a single chargeback currency. However, Cloud Foundation teams sometimes encounter situations in which they need to process billing or chargeback in multiple currencies. For example GCP might charge your organization for cloud consumption in EUR while Azure charges consumption in USD.
In case standardisation on a single currency is not possible, meshStack supports chargeback in multiple currencies. The following product funcitonalities fully support multi-currency scenarios:
- Private Cloud billing: Operators can define products and usage rates in any currency.
- Public Cloud billing: meshStack preserves the original currency when importing cost and consumption data from the cloud provider.
- meshMarketplace: Service owners can define prices for their services using the OSB Catalog in any currency.
- Tenant Usage Reports: Tenant usage reports support line items in multiple currencies and aggregates net amounts in each currency separately.
- Chargeback Statements: Chargeback statements support multiple currencies and aggregate net amounts in each currency separately.
- Tenant Fees: Operators can define tenant fees in any currency.
- Discounts: Discounts support any currency. Discounts calculated from a source amount (e.g. percentage discounts) use the same currency as the source amount.
The following product functionalitities do currently not support multi-currency scenarios:
- Detailed Tenant Usage Report: Detailed tenant usage reports (available for OpenShift, OpenStack, Cloud Foundry and meshMarketplace) offer additional detail on a Tenant Usage Report. However, the net amount aggregation assumes all line items are in EUR. This can create confusion if the underlying Tenant Usage Report uses a different or multiple currencies.
- Payment Methods: Amounts specified on payment methods are currently assumed to be in EUR.
meshcloud will revisse support for multi-currency billing and chargeback in these areas as part of the upcoming Cost Management Roadmap Feature.
Defining a custom Product Catalog
The following sections will introduce features of the meshStack product catalog.
Core Concepts
Scope Selectors
Every cloud resource has a scope in meshcloud, defined by the meshTenant in belongs to. ScopeSelectors are hierarchical selectors that allow Product Catalog entries to specify the resource scopes they apply to. ScopeSelectors can target all platforms of a certain platform type, a specific meshPlatform or an individual meshTenant.
Using ScopeSelectors, Operators can for example define different prices for platforms running in different locations or platforms.
let ScopeSelector =
{-
The Scope Selector specifies the cloud resource scopes that a product catalog entry applies to.
Fields, depending on the type of scope selected:
platformType:
The PlatformType to target
location:
The meshLocation identifier to target
platformInstance:
The meshPlatform identifier to target
localProjectId:
The platform identifier for the meshTenant, e.g. an Azure Subscription Id.
-}
let ByPlatformType = { platformType : PlatformType }
let ByPlatformInstance =
ByPlatformType ⩓ { location : Text, platformInstance : Text }
let ByTenant = ByPlatformInstance ⩓ { localProjectId : Text }
in < PlatformType : ByPlatformType
| PlatformInstance : ByPlatformInstance
| Tenant : ByTenant
>
let example =
-- this ScopeSelector targets all platforms of type "Azure"
ScopeSelector.PlatformType { platformType = PlatformType.Azure }
let example2 =
-- this scope selector targets a specific OpenStack platform
ScopeSelector.PlatformInstance
{ platformType = PlatformType.OpenStack
, location = "eu.de-central"
, platformInstance = "pike"
}
Usage Types and Units
When configuring a product for private cloud billing, operators need to choose the cloud resource type to target and how the metering engine should generate usages and apply prices to them. The documentation section of each private cloud platform lists the supported resource types and the traits available in the metering engine. Traits are a properties of a cloud resource like CPU or RAM. Operators can use traits to configure predicates (filter resources applicable to a pricing rule) and to control how meshMetering calculates usages.
meshMetering supports flexible rules for creating usages, like
- time: charge consumption based on the usage of a resource over a time period
- quantity: charge consumption based on a quantity
- time-quantity: charge consumption based on the product of time and quantity
Quantities are represented with prefixable units according to the UCUM standard inside meshMetering. Specifically, meshMetering uses the UCUM "print" formatting where units need to be human readable (e.g. in usage reports). In configuration (e.g. when defining a product catalog entry), meshMetering uses the UCUM "case-sensitive" representations. This can lead to small differences when describing units. For example, one kilo-byte would be represented as
1 kBin a usage report1 kByin a product catalog entry
When building a product catalog, operators can define rates to define prices for usages. It's also possible to define rates with a different prefix, e.g. if the primitive unit of the resource trait is measured in "MB", operators can define a price in "GB". meshMetering will automatically apply the necessary conversions so that usage reports are presented in the unit defined in the product catalog. This is useful to provide human-readable and intuitive units for pricing rules. meshMetering supports the following prefixes, with examples described in bytes according to UCUM "case-sensitive" representation.
| Metric Prefix | Example | Binary Prefix | Example |
|---|---|---|---|
| kilo (10^3) | 1 kBy | kibi (1024^1) | 1 KiBy |
| mega (10^6) | 1 MBy | mebi (1024^2) | 1 MiBy |
| giga (10^9) | 1 GBy | gibi (1024^3) | 1 GiBy |
| terra (10^12) | 1 TBy | tebi (1024^4) | 1 TiBy |
| peta (10^15) | 1 PBy | pebi (1024^5) | 1 PiBy |
Discounts
Discounts allow Operators to add or deduct charges to Tenant Usage Reports. A common use case for Platform Operators is to configure a discount with a positive rate to charge projects with a "management fee" based on the project's actual cloud consumption.
let Discount =
{-
scope:
Specifies the scope this discount applies to, see ScopeSelector
discountRule:
Specifies the type of discount rule used to calculate the discount.
displayName:
The name to display for this discount on the tenant usage report.
description:
The description to display for this discount on the tenant usage report.
sellerId:
The id of the seller to charge this discount to. A positive discount netAmount will be credited to this
seller during chargeback, while a negative netAmount will be charged to this seller.
sellerProductGroup:
A product group identifier for the seller. Specifying this field allows sellers to aggregate
charges and credits by different categories for reporting purposes.
-}
{ scope : ScopeSelector
, discountRule : DiscountRule
, displayName : Text
, description : Text
, sellerId : Text
, sellerProductGroup : Text
}
let example
: Discount
=
-- This Discount charges a 5% Management Fee on all Azure consumption and is credited to the operations team
{ scope =
ScopeSelector.PlatformType { platformType = PlatformType.Azure }
, sellerId = "azure-cloud-foundation"
, sellerProductGroup = "fees"
, displayName = "Azure Management Fee"
, description =
"Management Fee for Azure Cloud Operations Team, based on usage"
, discountRule =
DiscountRule.fixedPercentage
{ discountPercentage = 5.0
, discountScope =
{ productSellerIdRegex = Some "Azure"
, productDisplayNameRegex = None Text
, usageTypeDisplayNameRegex = None Text
}
}
}
Discount rules
Discount rules specify how a discount is computed.
meshStack currently provides two discount rules. Future releases could provide additional discount rule options.
let DiscountRule =
< fixedPercentage : FixedPercentageDiscountRule
| tieredPercentage : TieredPercentageDiscountRule
>
A discount rule contains a discount scope that specifies which usage report line items are eligible for the discount. The line items for the report are first filtered by this discount scope before calculating the sum and applying the discount.
let DiscountScope =
{-
Specify the regular expressions for sellerId, product display name and usage type display name
that should be matched when filtering usage report line items for applying a discount.
-}
{ productSellerIdRegex : Optional Text
, productDisplayNameRegex : Optional Text
, usageTypeDisplayNameRegex : Optional Text
}
Fixed Percentage Discount Rule
The fixed percentage discount rules calculates the fee as a percentage of the total consumption.
let FixedPercentageDiscountRule =
{-
Calculates the discount as a fixed percentage of a source amount using the formula
```
discountNetAmount = sourceNetAmount * discountPercentage / 100
```
discountScope:
The discount is calculated on a source amount computed by summing the usage line item net amounts
filtered by this DiscountScope. This is typically used so that the discount only applies to usages
generated by cloud consumption.
A string representation of this discount scope will be shown in the tenant usage report line item.
discountPercentage:
The discount percentage to apply. Use positive rates to generate additional fees, use negative rates
to deduct charges.
-}
{ discountScope : DiscountScope, discountPercentage : Double }
let example
: FixedPercentageDiscountRule
= {-
This fee adds 5% to to all azure consumption.
-}
{ discountPercentage = 5.0
, discountScope =
{ productSellerIdRegex = Some "Azure"
, productDisplayNameRegex = None Text
, usageTypeDisplayNameRegex = None Text
}
}
Tiered Discount Rule
The tiered discount rule defines tiers of cloud resource consumption. For each tier a discount percentage is used to calculate the discount to be used.
let TieredPercentageDiscountRule =
{-
Calculates the discount as percentage of a source amount using the formula
```
discountNetAmount = sourceNetAmount * "discountPercentage of activated tier" / 100
```
discountScope:
The discount is calculated on a source amount computed by summing the usage line item net amounts
filtered by this discount scope. This is typically used so that the discount only applies to usages
generated by cloud consumption.
A string representation of this discount scope will be shown in the tenant usage report line item.
discountPercentageTiersByLowerThresholds:
lowerThreshold:
Specify tiers by their threshold.
- If source amount is not greater than any lowerThreshold, no discount is given.
- If source amount is greater than more than one lowerThreshold, the tier with the highest threshold is activated.
Up to one tier is activated at a time.
discountPercentage:
The discount percentage to apply. Use positive rates to generate additional fees, use negative rates
to deduct charges.
-}
{ discountScope : DiscountScope
, discountPercentageTiersByLowerThresholds :
List { lowerThreshold : Double, discountPercentage : Double }
}
let example
: TieredPercentageDiscountRule
=
{-
This TieredPercentageDiscountRule is applied on all Azure consumption.
The applicable fee depends on the source amount.
Using interval notation the explicitly defined tiers can be described as:
- source amount in [5,10) -> 2.5% fee
- source amount in [10,∞) -> 1% fee
Because the smallest lowerThreshold of the defined tiers is greater than 0 the TieredPercentageDiscountRule implicitly
defines a tier with discountPercentage 0% for every source amount strictly less than the smallest tier.
This results in the following fee
- source amount in [0,5) -> 0% fee
-}
{ discountScope =
{ productSellerIdRegex = Some "Azure"
, productDisplayNameRegex = None Text
, usageTypeDisplayNameRegex = None Text
}
, discountPercentageTiersByLowerThresholds =
[ { lowerThreshold = 5.0, discountPercentage = 2.5 }
, { lowerThreshold = 10.0, discountPercentage = 1.0 }
]
}
Configuration
The following configuration options are available at mesh.kraken.productcatalog:
{ discounts : List Discount }
Common Chargeable Resources
This section describes the resources that do not strictly belong to a specific cloud platform that can be defined in the catalog. Products referring to these resources can be defined for all or multiple cloud platforms.
meshTenant
Represents a meshTenant. Currently available for Azure, AWS and GCP platforms.
id: mesh.tenant
traits:
- landingZoneName
- platformType
You can define products based on this resource type to charge fees based on the Landing Zone that is in use by a meshTenant or to simply charge a fee on the meshTenant itself.
Chargeback
Chargeback is the process of allocating IT cost to consumers and feeding it into the company-wide finance and controlling processes.
Each project in meshStack is associated with a Chargeback Account. meshStack periodically generates chargeback statements.
The attributes that shall be part of the billing info on the chargeback statements can be configured.
You need to specify a wait-period after which the chargeback statements are finalized. This period exists to allow the public cloud platforms to get all their usage events into the calculation. For private cloud platforms the waiting period is usually a few hours up to a day, but for public cloud providers it can be significantly longer. If you plan to use a public cloud provider, please choose the longest wait period for finalizing your chargeback statements. This ensures that all discounts and events of the month are included in the chargeback statement meshStack generates.
| Provider | Suggested Wait Period |
|---|---|
| GCP | 5 Days |
| AWS | 6 Days |
| Azure | Depends on the customers Azure EA account, please contact us and check when Azure bills you. It can happen in the middle of a month. So delays of about 15 days are to be expected. |
Available metadata keys
The following metadata keys are derived from meshStack metadata and therefore available on every meshStack implementation
| Key | Description |
|---|---|
| tenantLandingZone | Name of the Landing Zone used by the Tenant |
| last_modified | Date when metadata was last modified |
| contactMail | email address of the project owner |
| ownerUsername | Username of the project owner |
| ownerFirstName | First name of the project owner |
| ownerLastName | Last name of the project owner |
| tenant_local_id | The id of the tenant as provided by the platform |
| paymentName | Name of the payment method |
| paymentIdentifier | Identifier of the payment method |
| paymentExpirationDate | Expiration date of the payment method |
| paymentAmount | Amount available for payment method |
Available tag keys
It is also possible to derive meshTags as metadata keys by using its tag name.
Configuration example
The following configuration options are available at mesh.kraken.api.statements:
let Statements =
{-
relevant-meta-keys:
A list of metadata and tag keys that shall appear in chargeback statements as billing info.
General payment information can be accessed via paymentName, paymentIdentifier, paymentExpirationDate
and paymentAmount. Custom Tags can be referenced via their property name in the according tag JSON schema.
Custom Tags are customer tags, project tags and payment tags.
period-offset-days:
It is the offset of days after which chargeback statements are generated.
This time should always be set to a higher value than the finalizeReportsAfterDays
that are configured for kraken-worker, as only finalized reports are considered in chargeback statements.
first-period:
Chargeback statement periods will be created monthly starting from this date on (UTC datetime format: yyyy-MM-ddTHH:mm:ssZ)
-}
{ relevant-meta-keys : List Text
, period-offset-days : Natural
, first-period : Text
}
let example
-- these relevant-meta-keys reference all statically available payment information
: Statements
= { relevant-meta-keys =
[ "paymentName"
, "paymentIdentifier"
, "paymentExpirationDate"
, "paymentAmount"
]
, period-offset-days = 5
, first-period = "2020-01-01T00:00:00Z"
}
let example2
-- these relevant-meta-keys reference tags that can be defined individually per meshImplementation
: Statements
= { relevant-meta-keys = [ "customTag1", "customTag2" ]
, period-offset-days = 5
, first-period = "2020-01-01T00:00:00Z"
}
Budgeting
under construction, get in touch for more details