Stage 2 of 9 · 7 lessons · ~2 weeks
Reading the bill and tagging
Get fluent in Cloud Billing reports and the billing export to BigQuery, then make the bill say who spent what: labels, a written tagging policy, enforcement in your infrastructure code, and a plan for spend that cannot be labelled.
Start: Cloud Billing reportsLessons· one lesson for each topic, in this order
Do this
- Learn the main grouping and filter options in your cost tool.
- Turn on the detailed billing export and confirm the first files or rows arrive.
- Write a five-key tagging policy with allowed values.
- Apply the tags from infrastructure code, not by hand.
- Activate or enable the tags in your cost tool where the cloud requires it.
- Write three SQL queries and check that one matches the invoice total.
Start with· follow one of these
- CourseFreeGoogle Cloud cost management courses (Google Skills)
Google Cloud · Beginner
Finish "Understand Your Google Cloud Costs": its labs query billing data in BigQuery
- BookPaidCloud FinOps, 2nd edition (O'Reilly)
O'Reilly Media · Intermediate · Paid book
Paid: the chapters on allocation and tagging strategy explain the reasoning behind a good policy
Practise
Keep handy
Also worth your time
Before moving on: A detailed billing export turned on in your cloud account, a written five-key tagging policy applied to every resource you own, and three saved queries or views: cost by service, cost by team tag with an untagged bucket, and top resources, with the total matching the invoice.
Turn on the detailed export today, before you think you need it. Every FinOps team I know has wished it had history from further back. Then keep the tagging policy short. Five keys that are always right beat thirty that are sometimes right.