AWS Cost Allocation Tags Best Practices in Secrets Manager
How to use AWS Secrets Manager's new Cost Allocation Tags feature
Discover how to use Secrets Manager Costs Allocation Tags, a new tool, to better understand your spending.
AWS Secrets Manager manages, retrieves, and rotates database credentials, application credentials, API keys, and other secrets. Replacement of hard-coded credentials in application source code with runtime calls to retrieve credentials dynamically helps prevent unauthorised access to secrets from source code, configuration, or components. Payer accounts control cost allocation tags.
Before this capability, your AWS bill would only show the total cost of Secrets Manager for a given account; fees per secret could not be separated by cost centre or organisation.
AWS Secrets Manager tags cost allocation
New feature: AWS Secrets Manager Cost Allocation Tags. Cost Allocation Tags, a basic AWS feature, can assign a key-value pair to a resource. AWS Cost Explorer supports these cost allocation tags. Once activated, these tags let you classify and track spending. Make a tag group with the value Engineering to identify engineering team resources. Once you activate this cost allocation tag, you can track charges, filter or group by tags in Cost Explorer and add tags to reports for analysis and visualisation, such as cost and use reports.
AWS Secrets Manager now supports cost allocation tags for better expenditure control and visibility. This lets you better classify and track Secrets Manager usage expenses. AWS costs can be better managed by assigning secret charges to cost centres or organisations.
The purpose of cost allocation tags
Tags are labels you or AWS assign to AWS resources. Each tag has a key and value. Every resource must have a unique tag key with one value. Cost allocation tags help you track AWS charges and organise resources.
This new skill lets you:
Dissect Secrets Manager expenditures by company-relevant factors like environment, project, or department.
Check Cost Explorer's itemised Secrets Manager usage and cost and use data.
Improve chargeback and cost allocation across your firms and divisions.
Creating AWS cost allocation tags
The AWS Secrets Manager tag cost allocation process has four steps:
Cost allocation labels are needed.
Tag resources (secrets manager secrets) with cost allocation.
At the AWS Billing console, enable your Cost Allocation Tags.
Tag-filter and group Cost Explorer to create cost categories.
After creating and attaching user-defined tags to resources, the Cost Allocation Tags page in the AWS Billing dashboard may not reveal tag keys for activation for 24 hours. Once tags appear, you must activate them for AWS to track expenses and display them in Cost Explorer. Tag key activation may take further 24 hours.
Create and add user-defined tags for Secrets Manager secret cost allocation using the AWS CLI or Management Console. The tag key CostCenter is used to monitor costs by cost centre.
Select an existing or new secret in the Secrets Manager console and click Tags to edit tags. A key-value pair, like CostCenter, and a cost centre code, such 7263 for engineering or 1121 for finance, would be assigned.
AWS CLI users can use aws secretsmanager tag-resource. The –secret-id and –tags must be key-value pairs (Key=CostCenter,Value=7263). When this command works, no output is usually provided.
Use the AWS CLI or Billing and Cost Management console to enable user-defined cost allocation tags.
Select user-defined cost allocation tags, choose tag keys, then click Activate in the Console to activate cost allocation tags. This opens the AWS Cost Management and Billing window.
The aws ce update-cost-allocation-tags-status command sets the Status to Active and provides the TagKey (e.g., TagKey=CostCenter,Status=Active).
Cost Explorer results are the final phase. After Cost Explorer displays the activated tag (such as CostCenter) under Tags in the Filter or Group By fields, you can filter or group by use and charges.
Cost Explorer lets you set report parameters to see results. After selecting a Date Range, select Dimension as Tag under Group by and choose your tag (e.g., Cost Centre). Filters let you select The Secrets Manager Service.
Tag values (e.g., by cost centres like engineering 7263 and finance 1121) show the cost and utilisation of your secrets. This report lets you cross-charge secret charges to your company's cost areas.
