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Apr202306

UI Updated to Reflect New Product Name

Through March and April, we rolled out changes to our platform user interface to reflect the new product name: VMware Aria Cost powered by CloudHealth. Key areas of the platform that have been updated include:

  • Login page layout and logo

  • Top navigation

  • Subscription emails

  • Our integration with other VMware Aria family products: vRealize Operations will become VMware Aria Operations, and Wavefront will become VMware Aria Operations for Applications.

Please note that URLs, APIs, and sender email addresses will remain the same at this time.

Help Center Moved to VMware Docs

CloudHealth product documentation is now live on VMware Docs at VMware Aria Cost powered by CloudHealth Documentation. 

The User Guide section in CloudHealth will be deprecated today. The site will be live for a few more months, therefore existing URLs or cross references will continue to work. However, no further updates will be made to the content starting today. Note that access to both GraphQL API and REST API documentation remains unchanged, as well as Product Updates. 

The Docs site hosts an easy Search and Feedback option. You can either click on the Feedback icon right under the title of the article or click on Send Feedback on the right pane, to notify the team of the feedback immediately.

Governance Navigation Change – Coming Soon

We’ve heard your feedback! In the coming weeks, Governance and its sub-pages will be pulled out of the Setup section and moved to a new top-level section in the navigation pane, after Recommendations and before Setup. Please note URLs will not change as part of this move.

Alibaba Cloud – General Availability

We are pleased to announce the general availability of Alibaba Cloud support. VMware Aria Cost powered by CloudHealth extends multi-cloud management to Alibaba customers by providing visibility into cloud cost and usage, streamlining decision-making with custom reports and dashboards, and mapping costs back to business units or projects. Note: We will begin billing for Alibaba Cloud support starting with your May cloud spend. 

VMware Aria Cost provides insights into Alibaba Cloud cost so you can view all your public cloud costs, including Alibaba, in a single platform. Features available include:  

  • Dashboard: Cost and usage overview with historical cost segregated by service categories.

  • Cost History Report: Ability to slice-and-dice cost across Alibaba Cloud services, compartments, and Perspectives with cost drill down showing resource level cost details.

  • FlexReports: Build reports across various dimensions to perform granular analysis on cost, usage, and asset data. 

  • Multi-Cloud Cost History Report: Alibaba Cloud is now included in this report, so you have a single point of reference across clouds. 

  • Perspectives: Ability to create dynamic business groups based on resource tags, compartments, and derived assets. 

  • Assets: Visibility into Alibaba compartments and a comprehensive list of assets (as derived from billing data).

Due to data protection challenges with cloud providers from the China region, Alibaba Cloud capabilities are enabled in the VMware Aria Cost platform via a “Bring Your Own Data” approach, wherein you need to create a designated storage bucket associated with a non-China region and post the Alibaba Cloud bill downloaded/exported from Alibaba console periodically. VMware Aria Cost will process the bills posted by you to enable cost use cases. The VMware Aria Cost platform needs access to the storage bucket created by you, which is accomplished using the new “Data Connect” capability available under the “Admin” menu. Only AWS S3 is currently supported as a storage location, but support for Alibaba Cloud native OSS buckets will be coming soon.

Learn more about Alibaba Cloud support on VMware Docs. 

New Kubernetes Usage Reports for FlexOrgs – Public Beta

We are excited to announce the public beta for two new Kubernetes Usage Reports that are visible at the sub-organization level in VMware Aria Cost FlexOrgs. These reports are the next step on our road to delivering cost and usage reporting as well as container cost rightsizing recommendations for all FlexOrgs users. 

Members of sub-organizations can now view Kubernetes usage in accounts for which they are permitted. You can access these reports by going to Reports -> Containers and selecting one of these two new reports: 

  • Kubernetes Containers Usage

  • Kubernetes Nodes Usage

These reports work on AWS, Azure, and GCP as long as the Kubernetes clusters have the VMware Aria Cost agent installed on them. They are backed by FlexReports and can be accessed via the FlexReports API. 

New Kubernetes Cost Report for FlexOrgs – Private Beta

We are opening a private beta for Kubernetes Cost Report that is visible at sub-organization level in VMware Aria Cost FlexOrgs. Members of sub-organizations can now view Kubernetes costs in accounts that they are permitted to. In tenants that are enabled for the private beta, you can access these reports by going to Reports -> Containers and selecting Kubernetes Cost History. The private beta is aimed for users on AWS Cloud with support for Azure coming soon.

The new report is backed by FlexReports and can be accessed via the FlexReports API.

We’re currently opening this report to a limited set of private beta customers to complete validation and testing. If you’re interested in participating, please contact your Technical Account Manager to determine eligibility.

New AWS & Azure Policy Actions

VMware Aria Cost has released new policy actions that can be used to help reduce wasted resources. These actions require a total of three permissions that need to be added, which are detailed below.

First, we have released support for taking a snapshot from an Azure Disk. With this action, you can take snapshots of your aging disks prior to deleting them. To use this, you’ll need to add the following permission to the service principal: Microsoft.Compute/snapshots/write.

Second, we have released support for starting and stopping RDS instances. Please note that this is supported for both aurora and non-aurora instances. To use these actions, you’ll need to add the following permissions to your IAM role: rds:StopDBInstance and rds:StartDBInstance.

Update to Metadata API – Add Filters in AWS Accounts Query

The Metadata API has been enhanced to accommodate a new filter feature in AWS Accounts Query. Fields applied for filtering can be id, ownerId, accountType, payerAccountId, and name. 

The new filter will speed up things in Custom Line Items flow during creation and fetching of Custom Line Items rules, as before we would collect all the AWS Accounts from the API and then complete mappings based on our requirements. With the new enhancement, users can query only the required AWS accounts, this would also speed up the response time. Filtering details, query request and response details are captured in this Help Center API Article.