Support for Additional Azure CSP Security Requirements

Microsoft recently announced their new Azure CSP Security Model for Control Panel Vendors, which is MFA-based and more secure for our partners and partner customers. This model requests consent from our users and instead of storing data in the CloudHealth platform, it makes API calls with refresh tokens. We will no longer be saving any new CSP credentials (ex. application ID, secret key) to access data from Azure portal on behalf of our partners. No action is required at this time, but we encourage you to update your Partner Center setup when possible as Microsoft will mandate the adoption of his model in the near future (date to be announced).

To learn more about authorizing with Microsoft, please view this Help Center article.

Multidimensional Reporting for Azure -- Private Beta

We are excited to announce the private beta of Multidimensional Reporting for Azure. We’ve taken our datasets for Azure around usage, cost, tags, and Perspectives, and have created a Multidimensional Report Builder that allows you to create your own analysis against these dimensions for aggregation of usage and cost information at daily, weekly, and monthly granularities. Both the API and UI will now support Azure data. 

If you would like to participate in the private beta, please contact multidimensional-report@cloudhealthtech.com.

GCP BigQuery Billing Support -- Private Beta

We’re pleased to announce the private beta of CloudHealth’s BigQuery billing support. This provides a richer data set and more granular billing details that are refreshed every 4 hours. We plan to use these details to get more accurate and detailed costs. As a reminder for all Google Cloud Platform customers, please enable the billing export to BigQuery. Learn how to enable billing export to BigQuery in this Google Cloud article. 

If you would like to participate in the private beta, please contact bqbeta@groups.vmware.com.  

New Amortization Reporting for Reservable AWS Services -- Coming Soon

To provide easier and more complete visibility into amortized costs on AWS, CloudHealth will be consolidating our 4 separate amortization reports (EC2 RI Amortization, RDS RI Amortization, ElastiCache RN Amortization, and Redshift RN Amortization) into a single report, appropriately named the Amortization Cost report. This new report will include all 6 reservable AWS services (EC2, RDS, RedShift, Elasticsearch, Elasticache, DynamoDB) and provides all-in-one visibility for:

• Amortized costs

• Recurring costs from the Cost History Report

• Cost reallocation rules

• Billing rules

New Policy Conditions Added

We have added support for four new policy conditions to help you manage your infrastructure and identify wasted resources. You can now be alerted based on the age of the following assets: Amazon RDS Snapshots, Amazon EC2 Images, and GCP Compute Snapshots. You can also be alerted when your Azure Enrollment API Key is going to expire.

Update to Costs of Amazon EBS Snapshots

In the CloudHealth Platform, Amazon EBS Snapshots are currently accounted for as an indirect charge. The costs associated with EBS Snapshots will be moving to a new direct charge: ‘EBS Snapshots’ over the next few weeks. Reallocation rules for EBS Snapshots indirect charges will not be applicable after this change and all the costs will be distributed according to any Perspectives you build for EBS Snapshots.

Due to the high volume of EBS Snapshots in the inventory, we will be releasing this change in batches. This change will be applicable to the past 13 months. We recommend that you save your cost and usage reports for reference. 

Support for Amazon WorkSpace Bundles

We have recently added collection and reporting for Amazon WorkSpace Bundles. This asset type is now available across the platform including the Activity Feed, Perspectives, and policies.

Tag Support for Amazon NAT Gateways

We have added tag support for Amazon NAT Gateways – you can see this reflected in the platform in the NAT Gateway Asset Report, use them to allocate these assets (and all related resources) into Perspective groups, and run configuration policies based on tagging.

Cost Allocation Support for Additional AWS Services

As previously announced, we have developed a more comprehensive approach for extracting asset attributes from bills to allocate costs for AWS services using AWS and CloudHealth tags. This time we have updated costs for Amazon Chime, Amazon Chime Dial-In, Amazon EC2 Container Registry (ECR), Amazon Managed Streaming for Kafka (MSK), and Amazon Neptune.

Previously, these costs were included in the indirect cost item associated with the respective service. Going forward, costs associated with these services will be distributed into the following direct charges:

• Chime

• Chime Dial-In

• ECR - Data Transfer

• ECR - Storage

• Managed Streaming for Kafka - Instance

• Managed Streaming for Kafka - Storage

• Neptune - Instance Hour

• Neptune - I/O

• Neptune - Storage

And the following indirect charges:

• Chime - Other

• Chime Dial-In - Other

• ECR - Other

• Managed Streaming for Kafka - Other

• Neptune - Other

For the services mentioned above, we will be using AWS Tags, CloudHealth Tags, and Resource Ids for cost and asset allocation. This allocation will be applicable to the past 13 months. We recommend that you update your reallocation rules for any ‘ - Other’ indirect charges. Learn more about supported AWS services in this Help Center article.

Update to Azure Health Check

We are excited to announce our latest addition to the Health Check Pulse Report: Azure CIS Security Recommendations. You will now see your top security recommendations in the Security Risk Exposure section of the Health Check to help you quickly identify your highest areas of risk identified via the CIS Azure Foundations Policy.