Shared Cost Allocation - Container Insights UI

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We are introducing a new container cost allocation feature that transforms how shared infrastructure expenses are tracked in Kubernetes environments. This feature enables customers to annotate and allocate shared infrastructure costs, such as system proxies, monitoring tools, and other operational resources, to specific application owners or cost centers.

Previously, these shared infrastructure costs were indistinguishably reported as standard workload expenses. Now, organizations can precisely tag and distribute these operational costs, providing application teams and financial managers with a more transparent, granular view of their true total infrastructure expenditure.

To start, this capability supports allocating shared costs at the Kubernetes namespace level. We'll be looking to expand support to additional Kubernetes constructs in the future.

Key Capabilities

Automated Shared Cost Identification

  • Automatically recognizes shared infrastructure costs from predefined namespaces:

    • kube-system

    • Cloudability

  • Applied consistently across all customers and clusters

Flexible Administrative Controls

  • Cloudability administrators can:

    • Define shared infrastructure cost rules for applicable namespaces

    • Configure organization-level or cluster-specific cost allocations

    • Precisely target infrastructure-related workloads (namespaces) and the effective date for the rules to apply

New Cost Metrics

  • New cost metrics have been introduced in the Container Insights UI to provide visibility into the allocated shared costs, including Shared Cost as well as resource-specific Network Shared , Memory Shared , CPU Shared , GPU Shared and others. This Shared Cost metric reflects the total cost, including allocated shared costs, after shared rules are applied.

Note:

Shared costs will only be calculated starting from the feature launch date. Queries including dates before the release date will return empty results in the Shared Cost column.

How to Configure Manage Share Rules

To configure shared cost allocation, use Manage Share Rules in the Container Insights interface to define how shared costs should be distributed across Kubernetes namespaces.

  1. Navigate to the Container Cost Allocation UI.
  2. Locate the ellipsis menu (...) in the upper-right corner, next to the Provision Clusters button.
  3. Click the ellipsis to open a dropdown menu.
  4. From the dropdown, select Manage Share Rules .
  5. Configure Rules and provide the Effective Date .
  6. Select All Clusters for organization-level configuration or choose a specific cluster from the dropdown for cluster-level configuration. Then, specify the namespace values to allocate the shared costs.
  7. Save changes.

The Shared Cost metric provides enhanced visibility into the total costs for your Kubernetes namespaces, including allocated shared costs. Once shared cost rules are applied, the Shared Cost column reflects the combined cost, distributing shared resources proportionally across the selected namespaces.

This feature ensures greater accuracy in cost allocation for showback and chargeback processes, helping you account for shared infrastructure and resource usage effectively.

Customer Awareness: Known Behaviors and Clarifications

To ensure a smooth experience, please note the following:

  • Future-Dated Rules Only

    • Rules for shared cost allocation can only be created, updated, or deleted for future dates (in UTC).

    • Changes will not apply retroactively to historical data.

  • Effective Dates for Rule Updates and Deletions

    • Rule updates or deletions do not take effect immediately.

    • Instead, a new scheduled rule with the updated or empty value will be created, taking effect on the scheduled date.

  • Union Relationship for Multiple Rules

    • When multiple rules are applied, they work as a union.

    • Example: If an All Clusters rule includes namespaces A and B, and a rule for cluster-foo includes namespace C, then all three namespaces (A, B, C) will be treated as shared costs for cluster-foo.

  • Empty Shared Cost Before Launch

    • If a query includes dates prior to the feature release date, the Shared Cost column will be empty, as shared costs are not calculated retroactively.

This new capability gives you more visibility and control over your Kubernetes infrastructure spending. We hope it helps your teams better understand and manage their total cost of container operations. Let us know if you have any other questions.