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AWS FinOps: Cost and Usage Reporting (CUR)

This document provides details on the FinOps stack implemented to track and analyze AWS costs, specifically for the EKS platform.

Implementation Details

The stack is located in live/aws/global/finops and uses the module at modules/aws/finops.

Components

  1. S3 Bucket (aws-finops-cur-05072026):
  2. Purpose: Secure storage for raw and Parquet-formatted billing data.
  3. Security: Enabled Server-Side Encryption (AES256) and Versioning.

  4. Permissions: Configured with a specialized bucket policy allowing the AWS Billing service to write reports.

  5. CUR Report Definition:

  6. Name: eks-platform-cost-report
  7. Region: us-east-1 (Mandatory for billing).
  8. Format: Parquet (Optimized for Athena).
  9. Granularity: Hourly.
  10. Artifacts: Configured with ATHENA integration metadata.

How to "Run" Reports

AWS Cost and Usage Reports are automated. You do not need to manually trigger them. - Initial Delivery: It can take up to 24 hours for the first report to appear after implementation. - Update Frequency: AWS updates the reports at least once a day, usually every few hours.

How to View and Analyze Reports

1. Raw Data in S3

You can browse the generated files directly in the AWS S3 Console: - Path: s3://aws-finops-cur-05072026/cur/eks-platform-cost-report/

Because we enabled the ATHENA artifact, AWS generates a CloudFormation template to set up the Athena table automatically.

Steps to enable Athena: 1. Navigate to the S3 bucket: aws-finops-cur-05072026. 2. Go to the prefix: cur/eks-platform-cost-report/. 3. Look for the crawler-cfn.yml file. 4. Download this file and run it in AWS CloudFormation in the us-east-1 region. 5. This will create: - An AWS Glue Database. - An AWS Glue Crawler. - The necessary IAM roles.

Once the crawler runs, you can query your costs using standard SQL in the Athena console.

3. Example SQL Queries (Athena)

Once the table is created (usually named eks_platform_cost_report), you can run queries like:

Total Cost by Service: 

SELECT 
  line_item_product_code, 
  sum(line_item_unblended_cost) AS total_cost
FROM "your_database"."your_table"
GROUP BY 1
ORDER BY 2 DESC;

EKS Specific Costs (by Resource ID): 

SELECT 
  line_item_resource_id, 
  sum(line_item_unblended_cost) AS total_cost
FROM "your_database"."your_table"
WHERE line_item_product_code = 'AmazonEKS'
GROUP BY 1
ORDER BY 2 DESC;

Best Practices

  • Lifecycle Rules: As your lab grows, consider adding a lifecycle rule to move reports older than 90 days to S3 Glacier to save costs.
  • Tagging: Ensure all EKS resources and Karpenter nodes are tagged consistently. These tags will appear as columns in your CUR report for granular chargeback analysis.