Creating widgets within Tailwarden is essentially about crafting personalized charts that bring vital data to the forefront of your cloud management strategy. Whether you’re tracking a specific expense or monitoring daily cost trends, widgets give you the power to visualize the metrics that are crucial for your operations.
How to Create a Widget
In the reports section of Tailwarden, click on Create a new widget
Here are the different parameters:
Widget name: name of the widget
Description (optional): description of the widget
Metric: the metric you want to measure in this widget
Cost: your cloud costs in $
Resources: number of resources
Calculation: the aggregation method used
Total: Sum when metrics is cost ; Count when metrics is resources
Add filter: any filter you want for the widget - if you had multiple filters, the operator used is AND
Date range: you can choose here the date range and the frequency. You can also change this directly on the widget afterwards.
Chart type: the type of chart.
Possible values for cost:
Possible values for resources:
Group by: only if metrics = cost. Allow you to group cost with different dimensions, including Resource ; Service ; Account ; Region ; View ; Charge type ; Usage type
Click on Create. You're done :). You can easily edit or delete widgets afterwards.
Most important parameters are Filters & Group by. By leveraging those two parameters, you can create many insightful widgets
Examples of Widgets You Can Create
Tracking Specific Costs
For those focused on the intricacies of their AWS billing, a widget can be tailored to track specific costs like AWS data transfer fees. Keep a close eye on this to manage and optimize where your data dollars are going.
Filter: Cloud service is AWS Data Transfer. You can even go deeper by filtering on a specific resource. Please find more information here.
Group by: Usage type
Identifying Expensive Resources
Pinpoint your top resource spenders by creating a widget that highlights your most expensive resources. This can guide you in resource allocation and cost-saving measures.
Filter: none
Group by: resource
Monitoring Top Services by Expense
Understanding which services are costing you the most is simplified with a widget dedicated to illustrating your most expensive services. With this, you can easily identify where to focus your optimization efforts.
Filter: the services you want to monitor
Group by: service
Observing Daily Cost Evolution
For a granular view of your spending, set up a widget to monitor cost evolution on a daily basis. This real-time insight can be pivotal in catching trends, anomalies, or spikes in spending as they happen.
Filter: none
Group by: none
Each widget created in Tailwarden is a step towards a more informed and agile cloud environment. By honing in on the details that matter, your custom widgets turn raw data into a strategic asset across any cloud provider you use.