AWS Cost and Usage Report
💡 Definition
The AWS Cost and Usage Report (CUR) contains the most comprehensive set of AWS cost and usage data available. It lists AWS usage for each service category used by an account and its IAM users in hourly or daily line items, as well as any tags that you have activated for cost allocation purposes.
🔑 Key Concepts
- Comprehensive Data: Provides the most granular data about your costs and usage.
- Delivery to S3: The report is delivered as a CSV file to an S3 bucket that you specify.
- Data Integration: Designed to be ingested by business intelligence (BI) or analytics tools for detailed analysis.
⚙️ How it Works
- Enable Report: You set up a new report in the Billing and Cost Management console.
- Configure: You define the report's time unit (hourly, daily), content, and the S3 bucket for delivery.
- Delivery: AWS generates the report and delivers it to your S3 bucket.
🎯 Use Cases
- Detailed Cost Analysis: Using the raw data to perform deep analysis with tools like Amazon Athena, Amazon QuickSight, or third-party BI tools.
- Chargeback: Accurately charging internal departments based on tagged resources.
- Tracking Reserved Instance (RI) Usage: Analyzing amortization and utilization of your RIs.
💰 Pricing Model
- Free: There is no additional charge for the report itself. You pay for the S3 storage used by the report files.
📝 Exam Tips (CLF-C02)
- Keywords: "Most comprehensive", "Most detailed", "Granular cost data".
- Delivers data to an S3 bucket.
- It's the primary data source for more advanced cost analysis tools like Athena or QuickSight.
See Also: * Cost Explorer * AWS Budgets * Athena * QuickSight