Working with budgets
You can use the Budgets feature in HPE Consumption Analytics to establish budgets and track your usage and cost against them, during the current period and historically. You can share a budget with groups or individual users to increase accountability in your organization. You can also set up alerts to be triggered when usage and spend exceed your defined budget.
The following will familiarize you with the Budgets screens in HPE Consumption Analytics.
Understanding the Budgets list view
The list view shows all public budgets in your tenant, along with any private budgets you've created.
The table contains the following columns:
- Name - The budget's name in each row is a clickable link to the details view for the budget
- Usage - Each row displays a bar chart line and the percentage of budget used; when you hover over the chart, a tooltip displays:
- Today's date
- The Actual usage amount and percentage of budget used
- The Minimum charge (if applicable)
- The Budgeted amount
- The Time interval (Monthly, Quarterly, Yearly)
- The number of Days left in the current interval
- Time interval (Monthly, Quarterly, Yearly) and the number of days left in current interval
- Target (e.g., Single, Account ID, Provider)
- Budget on (e.g., Cost, CPU)
- State (Active, Expired, Future)
- Visibility (Public/Private)
- Actions - In this column, you can click the ellipsis in a row to display the list of options:
- Edit (see Editing an existing budget)
- Configure alerts (see Configuring budget alerts)
- Delete (see Deleting a budget)
The Edit and Delete options are visible only if you have the required role(s).
You can use the Search field above the Name column to find a budget by name. The number of items currently displayed is shown below the Search field.
You can sort by any column in the table; you can also toggle columns on and off using the column button to the right of the Search field and Filter button (see sorting and toggling columns ADD LINK). You can use the latter to filter the list (see Filtering the budget list view ADD LINK).
If you have the required role(s), you can use the Export PDF button at right to download a PDF of the Budget (list view) page, and you can also use the Create Budget button to create a new budget (see Creating a budget).
To see more detail about a budget, you can click its name in the list view.
Understanding the detail view
By default, the detail view displays a header and four charts, to help you spot any areas of concern and make decisions as needed.
The header includes the following information:
- Budget title
- Budget on
- Time interval
- Date range
- Target (e.g., Single, Provider, Service category)
- Alerts (displays alert threshold(s) if configured)
- Audience (displays user group(s) if alerts are configured)
- Frequency (displays if alerts are configured)
You can use the buttons at right to toggle between the chart view (default) and the table view:
Under the Actions menu at right, you can select from:
- Edit
- Export to CSV
- Configure alerts
- Delete
Step-by-step instructions for each action are shown in Creating and editing budgets.
The following sections describe the charts shown on the detail page.
Understanding the Overview chart
If the target is by field, the chart title is Overview by [field name] (e.g., Overview by Provider); if the target is single, the chart title is Overview.
Below the chart title and subtitle, the chart displays a bar with a black vertical line representing the current date. The colored section(s) of the bar show the actual usage as of the current date, the difference between the actual usage and the minimum charge (if any), and the remaining budgeted amount (if any). Below the bar, the current date and the number of days remaining in the budget period are shown.
The bottom half of the overview chart displays the amount and percentage of the actual usage, the amount of the minimum charge (if the actual usage is less), and the budget amount as of the current date are shown, with their corresponding colors.
Minimum charge is displayed only for budgets that include HPE GreenLake charges.
If the budget detail view is filtered to show only public cloud provider(s), minimum charge will not be shown.
Understanding the Timeline chart
If the target is by field, the chart title is Timeline by [field name] (e.g., Timeline by Provider); if the target is single, the chart title is Timeline.
If the target is by field, a drop-down list will display at right above the Timeline chart, so you can filter on the target field values.
Below the chart title and subtitle, the chart displays the actual usage and budgeted amounts over the budget timeline. Actual usage is shown as a black line, and Budgeted as a gray area from zero up to the budgeted amount. When you hover over a point on the timeline, a tooltip displays the accounting date, the budgeted and actual usage amounts, and the difference between the two.
If the budget target is by field, filtering the budget automatically updates the Timeline chart (for example, setting the Provider filter to AWS shows timeline details only for the AWS portion of the budget).
Understanding the Usage chart
This chart is only displayed if the budget target is by field. The chart title is Usage by [field name] (e.g., Usage by Provider).
Below the chart title and subtitle, the chart displays a stacked bar chart showing the budgeted amount and the usage amount. The usage bar is stacked by field value (the legend below the stacked bar chart shows the colors corresponding to the field values).
When you hover over the budget bar, a tooltip displays the budgeted amount. When you hover over the usage bar, a tooltip displays the usage broken down by field value (e.g., if the budget target field is Provider, the usage amount for each provider is shown).
If there are more than 5 values for the target, the first 5 will display, and the remaining values will be aggregated under Other (the number of additional values will be shown).
Filtering the budget automatically updates the Usage chart (for example, setting the Provider filter to AWS shows usage details only for the AWS portion of the budget).
Understanding the Utilization chart
This chart is only displayed if the budget target is by field. The chart title is Utilization by [field name] (e.g., Utilization by Provider).
Below the chart title and subtitle, the chart displays the budgeted amounts and actual usage over the budget timeline.
If the budget target is by field, filtering the budget automatically updates the Utilization chart (for example, setting the Provider filter to AWS shows timeline details only for the AWS portion of the budget).
Understanding the Table view (read-only)
You can toggle from the chart view to a read-only table view of the selected budget, so you can delve into the details by time interval as needed.
When finished with the table view, you can toggle back to the chart view.
Creating and managing budgets
The following sections link to step-by-step instructions for creating and managing your budgets.
Creating and editing budgets
You can create a budget to track usage of your HPE GreenLake assets.
You can edit an existing budget in a similar manner.
Configuring budget alerts
You can configure alerts to be sent to selected users when a budget exceeds a specified threshold.
Adding a budget card to your HPE Consumption Analytics dashboard
You can add a budget card to your HPE Consumption Analytics dashboard, so that you can view and access a particular budget from your dashboard.
Exporting budgets
You can export the Budgets (list view) page to PDF and share it with others in your organization.
You can also export an individual budget's table view to work with the underlying data outside of HPE GreenLake Central.
Managing budget assets
If you have administrative permissions in HPE Consumption Analytics, you can transfer ownership of tenant budgets as needed in Asset Management.