Multi-Cloud Account Management

Many Principal Investigators (PIs) manage multiple cloud accounts. The FinOps toolkit allows PIs to view all accounts collectively, drill down into specific accounts, and manage common funding sources.

Funding Accounts: In the FinOps toolkit, an account can take two forms:

1. Linked Account/Subscription with costs: An actual account incurring its own cloud costs.
2. Funding-only account: An account used solely for funding other cloud accounts, with no costs of its own (available based on ongoing toolkit development).

Transferring Funds Between Accounts: PIs can transfer obligated funds between Linked Accounts within the same commercial cloud provider.

• The amount is subtracted from the source account and added to the receiving account.
• Note: Transferring funds between different commercial clouds (e.g., AWS to Azure) requires ARC support to process.

Allocating Funds to Subprojects

Within a Linked Account, a PI can allocate funds to subprojects.

• All resources used by the subproject must be labeled with a user:Project cost tag.
• Funds are subtracted from the Linked Account balance and added to the Subproject balance.

Handling Shared Resources Among Subprojects: When projects share common resources, you can label them with a user:Project tag identifying the sharing projects, or identify that all unlabeled costs should be shared. Shared costs can be allocated three ways:

1. Fixed percentage: Specific percentages for each project (e.g., 40% to A, 60% to B).
2. Equal distribution: Divided equally among all projects.
3. Proportional allocation: Distributed based on each project's share of total tagged costs.

Budget Allocation to Any Cost Tag

The FinOps toolkit allows budget allocation to any cost tag you use.

• Warning: The toolkit actively prevents allocating funds to multiple cost tags if it would result in double deductions. Avoid creating new tags after budget allocations are already in place for the current cycle to maintain accounting accuracy.

User Access and Permissions

• Principal Investigators (PIs): Have direct access to all toolkit capabilities for their accounts.
• Team Members: PIs can grant access to other project members to view usage metrics, costs, and budget balances.
• End Users: The toolkit can provide limited access to researchers to help them monitor usage against their allocation and track proximity to established limits. All end-user access is explicitly managed by the PI.