How data is processed in FinOps hubs From data cleanup to normalization, FinOps hubs do the work so you can focus on driving business value.

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FinOps hubs perform a number of data processing activities to clean up, normalize, and optimize data. The following diagrams show how data flows from Cost Management into a hub instance.


🛠️ Scope setup

This diagram shows what happens when a new, managed scope is added to a hub instance. Unmanaged scopes (where Cost Management exports are manually configured) do not require any setup in hubs.

sequenceDiagram
    config->>config: ① config_SettingsUpdated
    config->>config: ② config_ConfigureExports
    config->>Cost Management: ② PUT .../exports/foo


  1. The config_SettingsUpdated trigger runs when the settings.json file is updated.
  2. The config_ConfigureExports pipeline creates new exports for any new scopes that were added.


📥 Data ingestion

This diagram shows what happens when the daily and monthly schedules are run.

sequenceDiagram
    config->>config: ① config_Daily/MonthlySchedule
    config->>config: ② config_ExportData
    config->>config: ③ config_RunExports
    config->>Cost Management: ③ POST /exports/foo/run
    Cost Management->>msexports: ④ Export data
    msexports->>msexports: ⑤ msexports_ExecuteETL
    msexports->>ingestion: ⑥ msexports_ETL_ingestion
    Power BI-->>ingestion: ⑦ Read data


  1. The config_DailySchedule and config_MonthlySchedule triggers run on their respective schedules to kick off data ingestion.
  2. The config_ExportData pipeline gets the applicable exports for the schedule that is running.
  3. The config_RunExports pipeline executes each of the selected exports.
  4. Cost Management exports raw cost details to the msexports container. Learn more.
  5. The msexports_ExecuteETL pipeline kicks off the extract-transform-load (ETL) process when files are added to storage.
  6. The msexports_ETL_ingestion pipeline transforms the data to a standard schema and saves the raw data in parquet format to the ingestion container. Learn more.
  7. Power BI reads cost data from the ingestion container.


ℹ️ About ingestion

FinOps hubs rely on a specific folder path in the ingestion container:

ingestion/{scope-id}/{month}/focuscost
  • ingestion is the container where the data pipeline saves data.
  • {scope-id} is expected to be the fully-qualified resource ID of the scope the data is from.
  • {month} is the year and month of the exported data formatted as yyyyMM.
  • focuscost is the exported dataset.

    Hubs 0.2 only supports FOCUS cost exports. Other export types will be added in a future release.

If you need to use hubs to monitor non-Azure data, convert the data to FOCUS and drop it into the ingestion container. Please note this has not been explicitly tested in the latest release. If you experience any issues, please create an issue.


ℹ️ About exports

FinOps hubs leverage Cost Management exports to obtain cost data. Cost Management controls the folder structure for the exported data in the msexports container. A typical path looks like:

{container}/{path}/{date-range}/{export-name}/{export-time}/{guid}/{file}

As of 0.4, FinOps hubs do not rely on file paths. Hubs utilize the manifest file to identify the scope, dataset, month, etc. The only important part of the path for hubs is the container, which must be msexports.

Do not export data to the ingestion container. Exported CSVs must be published to the msexports container to be processed by the hubs engine.

To ingest custom data, save FOCUS-aligned parquet files in the ingestion container for the FinOps toolkit Power BI reports to work as expected.

Export manifests can change with API versions. Here’s an example with API version 2023-07-01-preview:

{
  "exportConfig": {
    "exportName": "<export-name>",
    "resourceId": "/<scope>/providers/Microsoft.CostManagement/exports/<export-name>",
    "dataVersion": "<dataset-version>",
    "apiVersion": "<api-version>",
    "type": "<dataset-type>",
    "timeFrame": "OneTime|TheLastMonth|MonthToDate",
    "granularity": "Daily"
  },
  "deliveryConfig": {
    "partitionData": true,
    "dataOverwriteBehavior": "CreateNewReport|OverwritePreviousReport",
    "fileFormat": "Csv",
    "containerUri": "<storage-resource-id>",
    "rootFolderPath": "<path>"
  },
  "runInfo": {
    "executionType": "Scheduled",
    "submittedTime": "2024-02-03T18:33:03.1032074Z",
    "runId": "af754a8e-30fc-4ef3-bfc6-71bd1efb8598",
    "startDate": "2024-01-01T00:00:00",
    "endDate": "2024-01-31T00:00:00"
  },
  "blobs": [
    {
      "blobName": "<path>/<export-name>/<date-range>/<export-time>/<guid>/<file-name>.csv",
      "byteCount": ###
    }
  ]
}

FinOps hubs leverage the following properties:

  • eportConfig.resourceId to identify the scope.
  • eportConfig.type to identify the dataset type.
  • eportConfig.dataVersion to identify the dataset version.
  • runInfo.startDate to identify the exported month.

FinOps hubs support the following dataset types, versions, and API versions:

  • FocusCost
    • 1.0
    • 1.0-preview(v1)
  • API versions:
    • 2023-07-01-preview


🗃️ FinOps hubs v0.2-0.3 

sequenceDiagram
    Cost Management->>msexports: ① Export data
    msexports->>msexports: ② msexports_ExecuteETL
    msexports->>ingestion: ② msexports_ETL_ingestion
    Power BI-->>ingestion: ③ Read data


  1. Cost Management exports raw cost details to the msexports container. Learn more.
  2. The msexports_ExecuteETL pipeline kicks off the extract-transform-load (ETL) process when files are added to storage.
  3. The msexports_ETL_ingestion pipeline saves exported data in parquet format in the ingestion container. Learn more.
  4. Power BI reads cost data from the ingestion container.

FinOps hubs 0.2-0.3 use the export path to determine the exported scope and month. This is important as updates to the path can break the data pipelines. To avoid this, we recommend updating to FinOps hubs 0.4. The expected path should mimic:

msexports/{scope-id}/{export-name}/{date-range}/{export-time}/{guid}/{file}
  • msexports is the container specified on the export.
  • {scope-id} is the folder path specified on the export.

    Hubs 0.3 and earlier use this to identify which scope the data is coming from. We recommend using the scope ID but any value can be used. Example scope IDs include:

    Scope type Example value
    Subscription /subscriptions/###
    Resource group /subscriptions/###/resourceGroups/###
    Billing account /providers/Microsoft.Billing/billingAccounts/###
    Billing profile /providers/Microsoft.Billing/billingAccounts/###/billingProfiles/###
  • {export-name} is the name of the export.

    Hubs ignore this folder.

  • {date-range} is the date range data being exported.

    Hubs 0.3 and earlier use this to identify the month. Format for this folder is yyyyMMdd-yyyyMMdd. Hubs 0.4 uses the manifest instead.

  • {export-time} is a timestamp of when the export ran.

    Hubs ignore this. Format for this folder is yyyyMMddHHmm.

  • {guid} is a unique GUID and is not always present.

    Hubs ignore this. Cost Management does not always include this folder. Whether or not it is included depends on the API version used to create the export.

  • {file} is either a manifest or exported data.

    Version 0.3 and earlier ignore manifest files and only monitor *.csv files. In a future release, hubs will monitor the manifest.


🗃️ FinOps hubs v0.1 

sequenceDiagram
    Cost Management->>msexports: ① Export amortized costs
    msexports->>ingestion: ② msexports_Transform
    Power BI-->>ingestion: ③ Read data


  1. Cost Management exports raw cost details to the msexports container.
  2. The msexports_transform pipeline saves the raw data in parquet format to the ingestion container.
  3. Power BI reads cost data from the ingestion container.


⏭️ Next steps


Deploy Learn more


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