Manage Cloud Computing Expenses (Tutorial)
 | Abbreviations Key |
| AIFI | Allen Institute for Immunology |
| HISE | Human Immune System Explorer |
| IDE | integrated development environment |
At a Glance
This document shows you how to manage your cloud computing expenses for HISE IDEs. It provides instructions for tracking expenses and comparing your actual usage to individual and team quotas. Finally, this tutorial shows managers how to track spending for their direct reports.
Components of Cloud Computing Expenses
You incur cloud computing costs when you use HISE IDEs to store and process data. Items that contribute to your monthly computing expenses include the following:
| Item | Costs based on |
| CPUs | Active processing time (sec) |
| Data-disk storage | Amount of provisioned space, even if unused (GB) |
| Memory | Amount of memory allocated to an instance (GB/sec) |
Best Practices for Efficient Cloud Computing
Cloud computing costs are tracked at the individual and account (team or partner) levels. An account represents a group of scientific collaborators subject to the legal obligations of those who access or analyze HISE account data. For details, see Understand and View Your Accounts and Projects (Tutorial). To minimize your individual and group expenses, use the available cost management tools outlined here, and follow these best practices:
Stop IDE instances when possible. Stopped instances incur cloud computing costs only for disk space—not for CPUs or memory.
Delete idle instances when they're no longer needed. Google storage buckets cost much less than disk storage in the IDE.
- If you're an administrator, follow the principle of least privilege, granting permission to access cloud resources only to those who need it.
For detailed cost management advice, see the recommendations in Monitor and Control Cost (published by Google). For questions about your individual or group quotas, contact your billing administrator or email immunology-support@alleninstitute.org.
IDE Billing
A quota is the maximum amount (in USD) an individual or organization is allowed to spend on cloud computing within a given time period. To monitor your team's quota, read your email notifications, and compare your personal IDE spending with the median team spending (see Step 1 below).
HISE users are notified by email as they approach various individual and team monthly caps. For example, you're notified by email when you reach 50% of your monthly quota. If you max out your monthly quota, you can't start a new IDE instance. In addition, any active instances are stopped, and active notebook jobs are canceled and returned to the queue, where they remain until the following month.
Instructions
To track your usage and compare it with that of other IDE users on your team, or to manage billing for your direct reports, follow the steps below.
Track personal billing
1. Navigate to HISE, and use your organizational email address to sign in.
2. Choose the accounts whose expenses you want to see. For instructions, see Understand and View Accounts and Projects (Tutorial).
2. In the upper-right corner of your screen, click your name.
3. From the drop-down menu, choose Billing.
4. On the Billing page, click the Personal IDE Billing tab.
A. To compare your actual spending with your monthly quota (USD), check the PERSONAL IDE SPENDING graphic. The preceding example shows that so far this month, $10.55 (2.11%) of the user's monthly $500 quota has been spent.
B. To compare your team's actual expenses with its monthly quota (USD), check the [PARTNER] IDE SPENDING graphic. The preceding example shows that the user's team or partner (ADMIN) has spent $779.99 of its monthly $2,000 quota.
C. The explanation below the [PARTNER] IDE SPENDING graphic shows the percentage of the team's quota you've spent (in this case, 0.53%), as well as the median monthly expenses for individual team members (in this case, $34.97.).
5. Stay on the Personal IDE Billing tab, and scroll to the next section, Personal Spend by IDE Instance.
A. To see expenses for each of your IDEs, click the tabs, such as anne-test.
B. To see the expenses incurred by your private folder, click the private-folder tab (not pictured).
C. To see a breakdown of expenses for a given date, hover over the specified date along the horizontal axis.
6. Stay on the Personal IDE Billing tab, and scroll to the next section, Total Personal vs. Median Partner Spending for the Last [X] Months.
The chart shows 12 months of billing data unless you've used HISE for < 1 year. For example, this user has used HISE for only 8 months. |
A. To compare your spending with the median amount spent by members of your team, view the bar graph.
B. To see the rough amount (USD) of your spending, look at the vertical axis.
C. For the precise dollar amount of spending in a single month, hover over the selected month. This user, for example, spent $66.66 in November, compared with median team spending of $37.56 the same month.
7. An alternative way to track IDE spending by instance is to go directly to the IDE.
A. From the top navigation menu in HISE, click RESEARCH.
B. From the drop-down menu, choose NextGen IDE.
C. In the lower-right corner of the card for each active (running or stopped) IDE, note the monthly spending (in this case, $138.70), or click the card for more details.
Manage team billing (selected users)
1. Navigate to HISE, and use your organizational email address to sign in.
2. In the upper-right corner of your screen, click your name.
3. From the drop-down menu, choose Billing.
4. On the Billing page, to see the total cost (USD) for each user, choose the IDE Billing for Direct Reports tab.
A. To see a cost breakdown, click the down arrow next to one of the listed users.
B. To sort users by name, click Sort by Username, and type the first few letters of the email address of the user you want to find.
Manage organizational billing (administrators)
1. Navigate to HISE, and use your organizational email address to sign in.
2. From the top navigation menu, click ADMIN, and choose All Organizations from the drop-down list.
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