Exploring Costs and Usage

This section will walk you through the process of exploring costs and usage using CAU Explorer.

Charts

Charts are displayed in the upper section of the CAU Explorer, and provide visual representations of costs and usage patterns for the selected dates, and filters.

By exploring chart data, a visual review of a chart might rapidly indicate an anomaly or periodic usage trend.

For example, displaying daily data grouped by resource types might show that there are certain days each week that a bar on the chart is comparatively higher than its neighboring bars, showing a peak in cost and usage for a certain resource type on a particular day of the week. This pattern might reflect a known weekly usage-intensive activity.

Structure

The CAU Explorer charts have a standard structure:

• X-axis: Time in summary units of days or months, according to the selected Granularity level.

• Y-axis: Cost or Usage scale in units of the configured currency.

• Data points: Hovering the mouse over a Time unit bar in the chart displays a pop-up detailing the individual Cost and Usage data points for each Group By item (if selected) of that time unit.

Legends

Legends provide an interpretation of elements in a chart.

• The Y-axis is marked with currency unit steps indicating costs and usage levels, providing a visual comparison across time units.

• The X-axis is marked with the time unit’s month or day beneath each bar in the chart.

• A chart with a Group By selection displays the proportion of each group’s summary cost and usage as a separate color in stacked bars.

• A “data points” pop-up indicates the color used for each group item, names the group and displays its cost and usage in monetary value and percentage of the time unit’s total.

Currency

All costs and usages are displayed in the user’s invoice currency, as configured in Zadara’s billing system. In the event that costs in the CAU Explorer are not presented in the expected currency, please contact Zadara Support.

Tables

Tables are displayed in the lower section of the CAU Explorer.

Tables show the same information as the charts, presented in a tabular monetary layout. Subtotals of filtered costs and usage are listed per time unit of the selected period, along with a grand total. If Group By is selected, a further subtotal breakdown is also displayed per group in each time unit, along with a grand total for all time units of the group.

Similar to the exploration of chart data, a visual review of a table might rapidly indicate an anomaly or periodic usage trend.

Using the same example, displaying daily data grouped by resource types might show that there are certain days each week that the cost and usage amounts are comparatively higher than neighboring columns, showing a peak in cost and usage for a certain resource type on a particular day of the week. This pattern might reflect a known weekly usage-intensive activity.

Data structure

The tables in CAU follow a standard data structure:

• Rows: Represent individual cost or usage categories, for example, compute costs or storage costs.

• Columns: Represent time periods, for example, daily or monthly costs.

Layout

The table layout is designed for clarity and ease of use.

Main view table layout

• Each row represents a specific category, and each column represents a specific time period.

• Below the heading of each column, the topmost row displays a total that is the sum of all rows below it in the same column.

• If the Group By option is not selected, there is a single data row below the headings, and the leftmost column displays the sum of usages displayed in all other columns for the selected period.

• If a Group By option is selected, the leftmost column lists a member of the selected Group per row, and the second column displays the sum of that row’s Group’s usage for the selected period.

Drill-down view

Use the drill-down view to explore the breakdown of costs that accumulate to a total or subtotal in the main view:

1. Click a cell in the top-level Main view table layout.

2. Click a bar in the Charts.

You can also explore the associated usage information, indicating how the costs were derived.

The drill-down view’s caption heading indicates the scope of the view, using the following convention:

Details of
<date range selection> | <Group By selection>

Additional features in the detailed drill-down view further assist cost and usage exploration:

• Estimation

• Setting the number of rows to display

• Adding and removing columns from the view

• Column order

• Sorting the table data

• Searching and filtering column values

• Download detailed drill-down view

Estimation

Setting the number of rows to display

Under the filters in the top filters bar, open the Rows per page dropdown to select the number or rows to display.

• Default: 50

• Minimum: 5

• Maximum: 100

Adding and removing columns from the view

Click the Columns button to the right of the top filters bar. Depending on the selected Granularity level (Daily or Monthly) the dropdown that opens displays:

• Selected Columns

  Default columns are auto-selected for the drill-down detail table.

  Most default columns are relevant for both Granularity levels (Daily or Monthly).

  The default Quantity, Hours and Amount columns are specific to the selected Granularity level:

  Column Name	Both	Monthly Only	Daily Only
  Report Date	✓
  Cloud	✓
  Customer	✓
  Resource Type	✓
  Item	✓
  Compute Account Name	✓
  Unit Price	✓
  Discount	✓
  Billing UUID	✓
  Quantity MTD		✓
  Hours MTD		✓
  Net Amount MTD		✓
  Daily Quantity			✓
  Daily Hours			✓
  Daily Gross Amount			✓
  Daily Net Amount			✓

  Uncheck columns to remove them from the display.

• Available Columns

  By default, many of the available columns are not displayed in the detail table.

  To add a column to the display, mark it, and then in the Selected Column section, drag it up or down to the preferred location.

Column order

There are two ways to rearrange the column display sequence:

• Columns filter:

  

  1. Click the Columns button to the right of the top filters bar.

  2. Drag one selected column at a time, up or down.

• Detailed table:

  In the detailed table view, click and hold the column header, and drag the column left or right.

Sorting the table data

To sort the table data according to the ascending or descending values of a selected column:

In the detailed table view, click a column header to display the table data sorted according to the sequence of the data in the selected column.

Searching and filtering column values

• Date and timestamp type columns support filtering for entries After or Before a specified date and time, or between the two.

• String and UUID type columns support filtering, by entering a partial match in the Search field below the column heading.

• Numeric type columns are regarded as strings for the purpose of searching and filtering.

Download detailed drill-down view

The CAU Explorer supports downloading a detailed drill-down view as a .csv file from the UI, or as either JSON or CSV output using the CLI.

• Download detailed drill-down view to CSV (UI)

  The drill-down view Download CSV button is to the right of the top filters bar.

  Click Download CSV to export the detailed drill-down view, and save it as a file in .csv format. The scope of the saved data is according to the selected time period, granularity, grouping and filters.

  The downloaded .csv file has the following naming convention:

  CAU_<organization>_<from yyyy-mm-dd>-<to yyyy-mm-dd>_<daily/monthly>_<detail/aggregated>.csv
  

• Download detailed drill-down view to JSON or CSV (CLI)

  From the command line, you can use the Provisioning Portal’s GET Organization API to download CAU Explorer detailed drill-down data in either JSON (default) or CSV format, and apply a custom time period, granularity, sorting and other optional filters.

  Usage:

  curl -X GET "https://<Zadara Provisioning Portal URL>/api/v2/organizations/<Organization UUID>/cost_explorer/details.json" \
     -H "accept: application/json" \
     -H "X-Token: <token>" \
     --get --data-urlencode "granularity=<monthly/daily>" \
           --data-urlencode "from=<start date>" \
           --data-urlencode "to=<end date>" \
           --data-urlencode "<optional parameter1>" \
           --data-urlencode "<optional parameter2>"
  

  Parameters

  The GET Organization API supports the following parameters:

  Parameter	Type	Description	Mandatory
  granularity	string	Granularity level Valid values: monthly (default) daily	✓
  from	date	Report start date in yyyy-mm-dd format	✓
  to	date	Report end date in yyyy-mm-dd format	✓
  cloud	array of strings	Filter by cloud ID
  resource_type	array of strings	Filter by resource type
  item	array of strings	Filter by item
  billable_type	array of strings	Filter by billable type
  user	array of strings	Filter by user
  compute_account_name	array of strings	Filter by compute account
  sort_by	string	Name of column to sort by
  sort_direction	string	Order order of sorted values Valid values: asc (default) desc
  download_csv	string	Download file in JSON or CSV format Valid values: false: JSON (default) true: CSV

  Example request :

  curl -X GET "manage.zadarastorage.com/api/v2/organizations/1a2b..36.char.UUID.string..x9z/cost_explorer/details.json" \
     -H "accept: application/json" \
     -H "X-Token: A1b2..token.string..yz" \
     --get --data-urlencode "granularity=monthly" \
           --data-urlencode "from=2025-03-01" \
           --data-urlencode "to=2025-05-12" \
           --data-urlencode "download_csv=false"
           --data-urlencode "billable_type[]=elastic_ip" \
           --data-urlencode "billable_type[]=volume"
  

  Response example, displaying 2 of the total_count of rows returned:

  Note

  When metadata is returned in the response with the value "estimation": true, it indicates a temporary calculated Estimation in place of unpopulated values for the row.

  {
     "status": "success",
     "total_count": 936,
     "data": [
        {
           "id": 3309950,
           "report_date": "2025-03-30",
           "org_id": "myOrg1",
           "parent_org": "myParentOrg1",
           "cloud": "myCloud1",
           "cloud_id": "4da21e44-66d4-4b1c-b8c3-abcdefgh1234",
           "customer": "",
           "resource_type": "Elastic IP",
           "resource_id": "c5a62293-1896-4778-9e34-abcdefgh1234",
           "resource_name": "172.221.32.11",
           "billable_type": "elastic_ip",
           "item": "Elastic IP - No Charge",
           "item_description": "Elastic IP - No Charge",
           "resource_created_at": "2024-11-08T15:53:33.000Z",
           "resource_deleted_at": null,
           "resource_status": "active",
           "compute_account_id": "123493a10ee44da98549c5a65def5678",
           "compute_account_name": "myAccount1",
           "compute_project_id": "1234454c6e294b5bacd5eb96f2155678",
           "compute_project_name": "myProj1",
           "compute_user_id": "",
           "compute_user_name": "",
           "vm_cpus": null,
           "vm_ram": null,
           "volume_disk_size": null,
           "vm_attached_to_uuid": "919f62b1-c189-4aa1-b421-abcdefgh1234",
           "service_type": "",
           "compute_instance_type": "",
           "compute_instance_type_aws_alias": "",
           "unit_price": "0.0",
           "discount": "0.0",
           "quantity_mtd": 906,
           "quantity_est": 672,
           "hours_mtd": 906,
           "hours_est": 672,
           "gross_amount_mtd": "0.0",
           "gross_amount_est": "0.0",
           "net_amount_mtd": "13573000.0",
           "net_amount_est": "0.0",
           "image_source": "",
           "billing_uuid": null,
           "created_at": "2025-03-31T15:49:02.119Z",
           "updated_at": "2025-03-31T15:49:02.119Z",
           "metadata": {
               "estimation": true
           }
        },
        {
           "id": 3309951,
           "report_date": "2025-03-30",
           "org_id": "myOrg1",
           "parent_org": "myParentOrg1",
           "cloud": "myCloud1",
           "cloud_id": "4da21e44-66d4-4b1c-b8c3-abcdefgh1234",
           "customer": "",
           "resource_type": "Elastic IP",
           "resource_id": "a465b79b-c982-4858-99b8-abcdefgh1234",
           "resource_name": "172.221.32.110",
           "billable_type": "elastic_ip",
           "item": "Elastic IP - No Charge",
           "item_description": "Elastic IP - No Charge",
           "resource_created_at": "2023-09-09T13:38:40.000Z",
           "resource_deleted_at": null,
           "resource_status": "active",
           "compute_account_id": "12340e3ddbb843979d8c782cb3c05a3c",
           "compute_account_name": "myAccount99",
           "compute_project_id": "1234c1cee6fe4eb890c73a4fc51f5678",
           "compute_project_name": "myProj99",
           "compute_user_id": "",
           "compute_user_name": "",
           "vm_cpus": null,
           "vm_ram": null,
           "volume_disk_size": null,
           "vm_attached_to_uuid": "",
           "service_type": "",
           "compute_instance_type": "",
           "compute_instance_type_aws_alias": "",
           "unit_price": "0.0",
           "discount": "0.0",
           "quantity_mtd": 906,
           "quantity_est": 672,
           "hours_mtd": 906,
           "hours_est": 672,
           "gross_amount_mtd": "0.0",
           "gross_amount_est": "0.0",
           "net_amount_mtd": "13574000.0",
           "net_amount_est": "0.0",
           "image_source": "",
           "billing_uuid": null,
           "created_at": "2025-03-31T15:49:02.119Z",
           "updated_at": "2025-03-31T15:49:02.119Z",
           "metadata": {
           }
        }
     ]
  }
  

Drill-down detail table columns

When daily granularity is selected, daily reports also include the following columns in the drill-down view: