Science Cloud Financial Operations (FinOps) provides the systems, processes, and analytics necessary for NASA projects to monitor their cloud usage, manage budgets, ensure spending discipline, and make informed financial decisions.
The FinOps environment is designed to give stakeholders full visibility into their cloud accounts through two major categories of tools:
- Observation‑based tools: These features allow you to track costs, view account balances, analyze what is driving your costs, detect inefficiencies, and generate spending forecasts.
- Controls‑based tools: These features protect your budget by delivering alerts, warnings, and access restrictions to prevent accidental overruns.
The toolkit is currently being expanded from a monthly reporting system into a full interactive dashboard. Once complete, this dashboard will offer daily cost views, fine‑grained breakdowns by specific services, integrated AWS optimization insights, and user‑customizable alerts.
Reporting and Cost Estimation
Currently, Principal Investigators receive individualized monthly financial reports issued one month in arrears. These reports detail your obligated funds, specific service usage, remaining balances, and accurate cost estimates for the just‑completed month.
A Warning About the AWS Cost Estimator: While you can view your estimated pricing in native cloud dashboards like AWS Cost Explorer, you should not use this as a source of true cost accuracy. Native AWS dashboards do not reflect NASA’s enterprise discounts, nor do they include your Enterprise Support costs.
How to Get Support or Request Features
The FinOps toolkit is continuously evolving, and we encourage user feedback. To request a new feature or report an issue, please email support@sciencecloud.nasa.gov.
- Use the subject line “FinOps Feature” if you have an idea for a new capability, or “FinOps Issue” if you are experiencing a problem.
- In your email, please include a description of the issue, your specific use case, your perceived priority level, and any workarounds you are currently using.
Submitting an email automatically generates a ticket, ensuring centralized communication with our development team. Additionally, if you need to download financial data in a specific report format not currently available in the toolkit, you can request custom formats through this same support email.