The goal of this blog post is to export your Azure subscription billing data into Microsoft Excel, so that you can apply some cool charts and distract your significant other from killing you when you avoid telling them how much you “accidentally” spent on Azure services, and they end up finding out later when looking at the bank statement.
Let’s get started.
What You Will Need
- An Azure subscription of any kind. I use a Pay-as-you-Go plan, which my wife now calls the “You-promised-it-wouldn’t-happen-again-last-time” plan.
- A machine with PowerShell 5.1 or later (I’m using PowerShell Core 7.0.1 for this, on Windows 10)
- If you want some “real world” data, setup a VM and configure Bastion on it, and leave it running for a few hours each day for about 5 days. I chose a D2s v3, Windows 10 machine, with a “Premium” SSD data disk (defaults on everything else). Then installed a bunch of apps and scripts. Yes, you read correctly. A “Premium SSD”. That was a critical mistake. I may force myself to watch 40 episodes of The View in a row as self-punishment. But not right now….
Poking a Stick at it
- Open a PowerShell console using “Run as Administrator”
- Check that you have the modules AZ and ImportExcel installed. If you don’t, install them now. If already installed, make sure they’re the latest version (e.g. use Find-Module to check)
- Authenticate with Azure
- Query for your billing information
- Export it to Excel
Let’s dive in a little deeper. Remember, the deeper you go, the harder it is for someone who’s upset with you to kill you. Deep breath before you go under.
Connect-AzAccountYou may get a prompt to open a website and enter an authentication code, so whatever happens here, you’re on your own. And no, the code shown below won’t work for you, trust me.
Once you’re authenticated, you can query some information. Let’s fetch your billing information. You can output the results to the screen if you want, but I prefer to capture it to a variable for further tinkering.
$cu = Get-AzConsumptionUsageDetailFilter down to the most important parts. A lot of entries will have a $0 cost, so I don’t care about those. I also don’t need all of the properties, just the name of the resource (InstanceName), its type (ConsumedService), the Billing Period, usage period and quantity, and finally: the cost (PreTaxCost). For now I’ll sort on the cost in descending order so I can spend a minute freaking out and hyperventilating while my dog snores.
$cu | Where {$_.PreTaxCost -gt 0} | Select InstanceName,ConsumedService,BillingPeriod,UsageStart,UsageEnd,UsageQuantity,PreTaxCost | Sort PreTaxCost -DescendingNow we can export this to an Excel worksheet, so I don’t need to sort the results (you can if you want) but Excel can do that just as well…
$cu | Where {$_.PreTaxCost -gt 0} | Select InstanceName,ConsumedService,BillingPeriod,UsageStart,UsageEnd,UsageQuantity,PreTaxCost | Export-Excel -Path ".\AzureBilling.xlsx" -WorksheetName "2020-06" -ClearSheet -AutoSize -AutoFilter -FreezeFirstColumn -BoldTopRow -Show
The Export-Excel parameters are pretty self-explanatory. But the “ClearSheet” parameter might be less obvious. It wipes the target worksheet (i.e. “2020-06”) before populating with fresh data, so I can re-run the code over and over without losing data on other worksheet tabs (same spreadsheet file).
In my case, the surprise for me was where I forgot the costs of maintaining a “jump server” in Azure with a data disk and Bastion access. Even with automatic (scheduled) daily shutdowns, the storage and network costs accumulated while I was focused on beer, grilling, Netflix, Twitter, YouTube, and blasting on my drumkit as if I know how to play. A few days of that (six to be exact) grew my normal 50 cents/month bill to $94.
A somewhat prettier look shows the chronological details like roadkill…
Point A is where I set up so-called “cheap” Windows 10 VM with a “premium” data disk (you thought I’d skip over that didn’t you). Only running it a few hours each day, and shutting it off (deallocated). But just like listening to my neighbor’s terrible music, the damage has already been done.
Point B is the day after my wife walked by and saw the “Cost Analysis” view on my screen, paused and said, “Um, what’s that? That doesn’t look like an Amazon order? Two-hundred and forty-wtf dollars?!” (for the record, she rarely drops F-bombs, even after being around me)
Point C is where I’d be making arrangements for cremation or burial (for the record, I asked for cremation by explosives with a BBQ party, at a safe distance. I don’t think the ATF will approve. Plan B is a gasoline tanker truck and a bonfire, at a safe distance of course)
Anyhow, you can see there’s a tiny gap at point C (May 27) where my (please God I promise I’ll be good from now on!) costs are diverging from the projected (oh no no no nooo!!!!) cost trajectory. I’ll be monitoring this every day because I’m in super-turbo-hyper-ultra-maxi paranoid mode now.
Takeaways
Some of the comments I’ve received from casual conversation with friends:
“You should’ve set a budget and alerts” – I did, but with so much email I don’t check my other inboxes often enough. I will now.
“Didn’t Mike Teske say to use a pre-paid card with a hard limit?” – yes, he did.
“Hey, didn’t Mike Teske warn about using a pre-paid card with a hard limit?” – yes, he sure did.
“Hey, didn’t…?” – yes, yes, he did! damn it!
“Geez. What a dumbass.” – (sigh).
“Actually, my bill last month was four times that. But I’m single.” – I hate you.
Anyhow, I should’ve known better. I watched Mike Teske give a fantastic presentation on avoiding surprise costs with Azure (at the PowerShell Saturday weekend conference in Raleigh, it was fantastic!), and yet, still, I went full-stupid.
I’m never too proud to admit my mistakes, like having friends who are single and have no debt, but aside from that. I’ve learned my “don’t get out of the boat” lesson* about taking cloud costs seriously. Pay attention to the disk types, the secondary costs (storage, bastion, etc.) and listen to Mike.
(* line from Apocalypse Now)
