Simplify Departmental Cost Allocation with AWS Organizations and Lambda
Managing cloud costs accurately across multiple departments and AWS accounts can feel like attempting to solve a constantly changing puzzle. Organizations often grapple with the challenge of efficiently tracking departmental spending across their AWS resource footprint. AWS offers numerous tools, such as AWS Organizations, to help consolidate accounts and billing, yet achieving precise and clear cost allocation remains a complex task, especially for businesses in the nascent stages of their cloud journey.
Today, we explore a seamless and automated solution that promises to transform your approach to departmental cost allocation using AWS Organizations and AWS Lambda. This solution eliminates the painstaking burden of manual tracking, providing unambiguous visibility into each department’s expenditure.
The Challenge of Cloud Cost Management
Imagine trying to manage expenses across many departments, each utilizing various AWS accounts. While AWS Organizations lays a solid foundation for account and billing consolidation, efficiently distinguishing and reporting on departmental spending requires a deeper dive. Cost allocation tags offer refined spend visibility; however, implementing an effective tagging strategy requires operational maturity that many may lack in their early cloud journey.
The conundrum is real: how do you garner clear visibility into departmental spends without the resources to commit to a robust tagging strategy? The answer lies in our stepwise approach with AWS.
The Automated Solution: An Overview
Within AWS Organizations, each department’s accounts can be grouped into an organizational unit (OU), creating a more structured overview. To discern costs for particular departments, one might assume that reporting on the sum total of accounts within each OU is straightforward. However, AWS Cost Explorer does not support organizational units as a reporting dimension. Enter AWS Cost Categories—a powerful feature allowing costs to be grouped based on dimensions like account, service, or region.
Using AWS Organizations and Lambda, this automated process creates and maintains cost categories for each OU, harnessed without the need for manual updates. Amazon EventBridge triggers this process on the last day of each month, ensuring that when monthly invoices arrive, data is fresh and cost categories are updated.
Implementing the Solution
Step 1: Create the Lambda Function
Sign into your AWS Management Console, navigate to the Lambda console, and create a function from scratch. Choose a descriptive name, the latest Python runtime, and the arm64 architecture.
Step 2: Configure Lambda
Within your new Lambda function’s configuration, replace the default code with a provided sample Python script. Deploy and adjust settings such as the timeout.
Step 3: Update the Lambda Execution Role
Fine-tune your execution role’s permissions, which is key to allowing Lambda to interact with organization details and manage the creation of cost categories.
Step 4: Schedule with EventBridge
Utilize Amazon EventBridge to schedule the execution of your Lambda function at the end of each month, ensuring that cost categories mirror the organizational setup in sync with invoice dates.
Step 5: Validate Cost Categories
Post Lambda’s execution, validate the newly configured cost categories within AWS Billing and Cost Management. This verification ensures accurate reporting reflective of actual departmental spends.
Step 6: Configure Reporting
Leverage your cost categories to compile detailed spending reports within AWS Cost Explorer, facilitating informed chargebacks and departmental budget analysis.
Conclusion
Tagging remains a best practice in cost allocation, yet indulging in a robust tagging strategy quickly is not always feasible. This AWS-based method offers immediate insight into department-level expenses, serving as a gateway to a mature cloud financial management strategy. As your organization advances, employing this methodology helps cross-verify and fine-tune tag-based charge reflections.
The future of departmental cost allocation is automated, insightful, and accessible—thanks to AWS Organizations and Lambda.
Meet the transformative power of automated cloud cost management—say goodbye to manual imprecision, and hello to clarity and control.