I'm looking to set up a dashboard for cost monitoring to get started with FinOps for my company's AWS account. Ideally, I'd like something similar to the cost explorer, but with the ability to create custom queries, pulling in data from apps—so, for example, costs related to ECS as well as application metrics, not just AWS prices. What are the best methods to achieve this? I've experimented with CUR export, but I'd prefer not to use Athena for queries; I'm more inclined towards using CloudWatch if that's feasible.
5 Answers
You could check out the Cloud Intelligence Dashboard; there's a demo available [here](https://cid.workshops.aws.dev/demo?dashboard=cudos). It might have some features you're interested in.
The official AWS solution you might want to look into is the Cloud Intelligence Dashboard. There's a good guide available [here](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/guidance/latest/cloud-intelligence-dashboards/cudos-cid-kpi.html#foundational-cudos-dashboard). Plus, there are loads of third-party tools that could help you out too.
For common use cases, there's a huge library of CUR queries available that can be super helpful. You can find it [here](https://catalog.workshops.aws/cur-query-library/en-US). It offers tons of examples to get you started!
If you're open to exporting data to S3, you could utilize Athena for querying, but if you want to avoid that, try setting up a solid tagging policy. Tagging resources effectively can help you track costs back to specific teams or departments. Even the cost explorer can be useful when filtered by tags, but explore other solutions if that’s not sufficient.
Honestly, I’m not the one footing the bill for AWS costs, so it's not really my concern 😂.
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