Cost visibility is the topmost priority of all the organizations using cloud resources. Minimizing the cost remains the primary goal for all the organizations. AWS Lambda is the serverless computing platform that is extensively used by the developers who are into coding, development, testing and so on. Hence, it becomes important to have in-and-out visibility into your Lambda cost corresponding to the resources being used to make sure that you have a clear idea of where and how much you are spending.
What is AWS Lambda?
AWS lambda is an event-driven, serverless cloud computing service. Lambda allows developers to program functions on a pay-as-you-use basis. Developers do not require to add any supporting resources such as storage or computing resources to their functions. The main advantage of lambda is that AWS does the job of managing the server allowing developers to focus more on writing the code.
Lambda functions are a piece of programming instructions that allows triggering of specific events in AWS such as the creation of an S3 bucket etc. Developers can manage lambda functions from Lambda dashboard as well as from CLI or SDKs.
Serverless architecture has been a game-changer since its existence in the cloud computing arena, Amazon Lambda being the most talked about.
Visibility into your Lambda cost by function
There may be a situation where the user (developer or any techie) is using numerous lambda functions. Since your developers and testers are only focussed on the application development and experimentation, they usually neglect the cost aspect of it. Whereas, for you (being the decision-makers or IT heads), seeing an exponential rise in the cost due to lambda functions without any clarity is as good as a nightmare. And as your organization continues to scale, it is quite possible that you will eventually lose track of which lambda function is costing you how much money.
Centilytics provides Lambda Cost by Function insight which lists down all your Lambda functions running in your cloud environment. This insight also shows the cost corresponding to the functions. Users can easily interpret their cost using tabular and graphical (pie-chart) representations.
Insight descriptions:
This insight displays the following dataset:
- Lambda Function Name: This column displays the name of the Amazon Lambda function.
- AWS Account ID: This column shows the account ID in which the respective Lambda function exists.
- Location: This column shows the location in which the Lambda function exists.
- Cost: This column shows the cost corresponding to the Lambda function.
Filters applicable:
Advanced Filters:
| Filter Name | Description |
| Account Id | Applying the account Id filter will display data for the selected account Id. |
| Region | Applying the region filter will display data corresponding to the selected region |
| Resource Tags | Applying resource tags filter will display data which will have the selected resource tag. For e.g.- If the user has tagged any resource using a tag named environment, then selecting an environment from the resource tags filter will display all the data accordingly |
| Resource Tags Value | Applying resource tags value filter will display data which will have the selected resource tag value. For e.g. – Let’s say a user has tagged some resource by a tag named environment and has a value say production (environment: production). Hence, the user can view data of all the resources which are tagged as “environment:production”. The user can use the tag value filter only when a tag name has been provided. |
| Discount | Selecting this filter will display data after applying any applicable discount. |
| Start date | Selecting this filter will set a custom start date and data will be displayed accordingly. |
| End date | Selecting this filter will set a custom end date and data will be displayed accordingly. |
Global Filters:
| Time zone | Selecting this filter will allow the user to view data as per a convenient time zone and is helpful in case of time and regional difference. |
| Round Off | Applying this filter will allow the user to view cost in exact decimals. For e.g. – giving input ‘2’ will allow the user to view cost up to 2 decimal points |
| Cost Type | The user can apply this filter to choose between blended and unblended cost.
A blended cost represents a unified cost that the user pays for a given service. It takes services such as S3, EC2, RDS, and several others into account. In comparison, an unblended cost represents a non-unified cost in which each type of usage with a specific rate gets its own line on the bill. |
| Refund | The user can apply this filter to choose between options to either include or exclude refund (if applicable) |
| Currency | Selecting this filter will allow users to convert their corresponding cost from one currency to another. By default, your cost is shown in USD (US Dollars). Using this filter, your cost in USD will get converted into the equivalent cost of the selected currency. For e.g., selecting INR from currency filter will convert your US dollar cost to Indian rupee cost. |