A demo of Filter Sets in action.
Today Vantage announces the launch of Filter Sets: a powerful set of cost reporting and filtering tools. Filter Sets give you the ability to chain conditions together to combine multiple segments of infrastructure costs across AWS Accounts, Tags, Regions and Services into a single uniform Cost Report. Filter Sets will show you day-by-day accrued costs as well as active resources meeting the conditions you define. Data from cost reports using filter sets is also available through the Vantage API.
Before, Vantage gave users the ability to create a single set of filters per Cost Report. As users set filters, Vantage would look for all of the conditions being met to show costs. For example, you could see all costs where resources matched conditions of having both Tag A and Tag B but not Tag A or Tag B.
Now, users can define groups of conditions with OR clauses within a single Cost Report using Filter Sets. For example if you wanted to see all costs with the "example-1" tag in member account 1 along with the "example-2" tag in member account 2, you can create two separate filter sets to accomplish this within a single Cost Report.
Organizations have aspirations of having a perfect tagging discipline so that all resources can be queried precisely. The reality is that organizations rarely meet this level of perfection and instead reality sets in that having a well-defined tagging scheme isn't always realistic. Filter Sets allows for reality to prevail but still achieve highly precise cost reporting. Additionally, Filter Sets is the only cost filtering tool that will show you active resources in your AWS account(s) meeting the filters' conditions.
Filter Sets are available to all users at the time of this blog post. To get started with Filter Sets, log into the Vantage console and apply filters at the top of any Cost Report.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. What is being launched today?
Today, Vantage is launching Filter Sets: the ability to combine resource costs together that fit multiple filter conditions in a single Cost Report.
2. Who has access to this feature?
All users of Vantage in all tiers (including the free tier) have access to Filter Sets. Feedback for having this feature has come from customers with more sophisticated organizational architectures and we expect this feature to be used more by customers in our Business and Custom tiers.
3. How much do Filter Sets cost?
Nothing. Filter Sets are provided for free to all users and are included as part of all existing subscriptions, including the Free Tier.
4. Why is this feature named Filter Sets and not Filters?
Vantage allows you to create conditions in sets. Each Filter Set by default looks for resources that match all conditions. You can have multiple Filter Sets in a single Cost Report. As you add additional Filter Sets, Vantage will look to combine costs where each Filter Set’s conditions are met.
5. Can you give me a basic example of a use-case and how this works with Filter Sets?
Yes. Let’s take the example of a Cost Report that would like to see all costs meeting two dimensions. In this case, a customer has inconsistent tagging methodologies across two different member accounts, but needs to deliver the aggregate amount of these costs to their finance team:
- All costs from Member Account 1 tagged with “environment=production”
- All costs from Member Account 2 tagged with “env=prod”
This would be setup as two different filter sets:
- Filter Set 1: All costs from all regions with member account 1 selected with “environment=production”
- Filter Set 2: All costs from all regions with member account 2 selected with “env=prod”
Vantage would show the combination of these costs in a single Cost Report.
6. How does the above example differ from what was previously available?
Previously, Vantage would look for the union of all resource costs that met all conditions. So if a user were to select costs from Member accounts 1 and 2 and tagged with “environment=production” and “env=prod” no resources would meet all of those conditions and the cost report would show no costs.
7. Is there API support for this?
There is no change in API support. However, in the same way you can access Cost Report data via the API, when you create Cost Reports with Filter Sets, the same data will be available via the Vantage API.
8. How does this compare to AWS Cost Explorer?
AWS Cost Explorer does not have console support for Filter Set equivalents. As a result, software engineers on your team must use AWS Cost Explorer APIs which are difficult to use and take engineering time away from your organization.
With Vantage Filter Sets, anyone at your organization can use a simple and intuitive user interface to create cost reports.
Additionally, AWS Cost Explorer will not show you active AWS resources meeting conditions you set.
9. I have existing Cost Reports - how does this impact me?
It doesn’t - no existing Cost Report filters will be impacted by this update other than the fact that all existing Cost Reports will have access to Filter Sets.
10. Do Filter Sets allow me to negate a query. For example: All costs not in us-east-1?
Not at this time. However, we plan to add support for this soon.
11. Do Filter Sets allow me to see resources that aren’t tagged with a specific key?
Not at this time. However, we plan to add support for this soon.
12. Do Filter Sets allow me to see untagged resources?
No. However, we plan to add support for this soon.
