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Archera User Guide
Segment Explorer - Overview
Segment Explorer - Overview
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Written by Jim Gallagher
Updated over a week ago

Segment Explorer

The goal of Segment Explorer is to help operational teams (DevOps and FinOps) dive into Costs at a daily level. From here you can identify cost anomalies, create rightsizing recommendations, as well as create some quick forecasts. Billing reports often take longer than the Cost endpoints so Segment explorer allows teams to see cost changes quicker before it hits your bill.

Segment Explorer page is to provide pass through data from cloud providers cloud cost API endpoints, for example AWS Cost Explorer, Azure, and GCP.

Segment Explorer pulls directly from Cloud API endpoints

Segment Explorer Graph

The Segment Explorer Graph allows you to explore your Costs in different ways. It defaults to month to date, group by Service, Account or Region. By default Smaller Costs are grouped together, but if you want to drilldown more you can toggle this off. Also expenses are shown in an Amortized state, that is from an accounting perspective when the cost is “actualized” from a tax perspective. If you want to see it from when it hits your bank account simply click toggle Amortized off. Credits can skew billing statements so by default credits are not included in the graph.

Filters

  • More Options

    • Include Credits

      • Defaults to off

    • Cumulative

      • Shows the cumulative total, great for comparing to budgets and targets.

    • Combine Small Costs

      • By default we return the top 5 costs and combine the other small costs.

  • Overlays

    • Total

      • Calculated total from all the costs on the page

    • Budget

      • Primary budget set in the segment planner for the segment.

    • Forecast

      • Forecasts that are pinned in the segment planner show up here and on the dashboard page.

  • Metric

  • Group By

    • All Providers

      • Service

      • Account

      • Region

      • Usage Type

        • Usage Types are the units that each service uses to measure the usage of a specific type of resource. For example, the BoxUsage:t2.micro(Hrs) usage type filters by the running hours of Amazon EC2 t2.micro instances. For AWS specific terms you can go here. AWS Billing Terms

    • Other Options / Provider Specific

      • Some providers have other group by options, we provide these for visibility but the reporting might be slightly different.

  • Calendar Select

Segment Explorer Cost Table

The Segment Explorer Cost Table breaks down expense on a line by line basis. You can toggle specific line items on or off to help create a report that shows whats causing a cost increase or decrease. You can also create custom Recommendations such as rightsizing a service or investigation into a service by selecting a few services and clicking Add Recommendation. In addition you can click Add Forecast to generate a forecast using the selected resources.

Events - Tab

There are many types of Events that could impact your infrastructure cost. To help cut through the noise Archera keeps track of Tagging Event changes, Reservations and Purchase events, and Anomalies.

Tagging Changes - Coming Soon

Archera will make a note when settings to a Segment’s Tags have been changed. This will be available here as it can impact comparisons in reporting.

Anomalies - Contact Sales

One type of event is Archera.ai’s Anomaly detection. This service monitors your bill for Anomaly events and sends an email Alert. From that alert you will be taken to the specific day that there is an issue. To enable Anomaly Detection Contact Sales via Intercom or Email.

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