Azure Billing Metrics Integration

The Azure Billing Metrics integration allows you to monitor your actual and future Azure spending to optimize resource use.

The integration uses the Azure Consumption API to collect usage details and leverages the Azure Cost Management API to bring forecast data.

Use the Azure Billing Metrics integration to collect detailed resource usage and forecast expenses for the coming weeks. For example, if you want to know which resources cost you most, you could view the top resources donut chart included in the dashboard for this integration. Then you can visualize the prediction for the coming weeks by looking at the forecast chart.

The Azure Billing Metrics integration collects one type of data stream: metrics.

Metrics give you insight into the state of your Azure costs. Data streams collected by this integration include usage details and forecast metrics. Usage details metrics track actual expenses including details like subscription ID, resource group, type and name. Forecast metrics track projected expenses over the coming weeks.

To use this integration you will need:

The Elastic Agent connects to Azure APIs, fetches usage details and forecast data, and sends it to a dedicated data stream named metrics-azure.billing-default in Elasticsearch.

         ┌────────────────────┐       ┌─────────┐       ┌─-─────────────────────┐
         │                    │       │         │       │ metrics-azure.billing │
         │     Azure APIs     │──────▶│  Agent  │──────▶│    <<data stream>>    │
         │                    │       │         │       │                       │
         └────────────────────┘       └─────────┘       └───-───────────────────┘

Elastic Agent needs an App Registration to access Azure on your behalf to collect data using the Azure REST APIs. App Registrations are required to access Azure APIs programmatically.

To start collecting data with this integration, you need to:

Set up a new app registration in Azure.

To create the app registration:

Take note of the Application (client) ID, which you will use later when specifying the Client ID in the integration settings.

Credentials allow your application to access Azure APIs and authenticate itself, requiring no interaction from a user at runtime.

This integration uses Client Secrets to prove its identity.

Take note of the content in the Value column in the Client secrets table, which you will use later when specifying a Client Secret in the integration settings. This secret value is never displayed again after you leave this page. Record the secret’s value in a safe place.

Assign a role to the App Registration depending on the scope you’re interested in.

To collect billing metrics from a single subscription, assign the Billing Reader to the App Registration on that subscription:

You can use the department scope (EA accounts only) or the billing account scope (EA and MCA accounts) to collect billing metrics from multiple subscriptions.

To collect billing metrics from a department (instead of a subscription):

To collect billing metrics from a billing account (instead of a subscription):

Take note of the following values, which you will use later when specifying settings.

Your App Registration is now ready for the Elastic Agent.

If you want to learn more about this process, you can read these two general guides from Microsoft:

Add the Azure Billing Metrics integration in Kibana and specify settings.

If you’re new to integrations, you can find step-by-step instructions on how to set up an integration in the Getting started guide.

The settings' main section contains all the options needed to access the Azure APIs and collect the billing data. You will now use all the values from App registration including:

Client ID string : The unique identifier of the App Registration (sometimes referred to as Application ID).

Client Secret string : The client secret for authentication.

Subscription ID string : The unique identifier for the Azure subscription. You can provide just one subscription ID. The Agent uses this ID to access Azure APIs. The Agent also uses this ID as the default scope for billing information: see the "Scope" section for more details about how to collect data for more than one subscription.

Tenant ID string : The unique identifier of the Azure Active Directory’s Tenant ID.

There are a few additional advanced options:

Resource Manager Endpoint string : Optional. By default, the integration uses the Azure public environment. To override, users can provide a specific resource manager endpoint to use a different Azure environment.

Examples:

Active Directory Endpoint string : Optional. By default, the integration uses the associated Active Directory Endpoint. To override, users can provide a specific active directory endpoint to use a different Azure environment.

Examples:

Resource Manager Audience string : Optional. By default, the integration uses the associated Resource Manager Audience. To override, users can provide a specific resource manager audience to use a different Azure environment.

Examples:

The data stream has some additional options about scope and period. To learn more about the scope, read the Scope section.

Billing Scope Department ID string : Retrieve data based on the department ID.

Billing Scope Account ID string : Retrieve data based on the billing account ID. The billing account ID is available on the Azure Portal at Cost Management + Billing, select a billing scope of the type "billing account", then Setting > Properties > ID.

Period string : The time interval to use when retrieving metric values.

There are three supported scopes for this integration:

The integration uses the Subscription ID as the default scope for the billing data.

To change the scope, expand the data stream section named Collect Azure Billing metrics in the integration settings and set one of the two available options (if you set both, the billing account scope take precedence over the department):

The Azure Billing Metrics data stream provides events from Consumption and Cost Management APIs of the following types: usage details and forecast.

{
    "@timestamp": "2021-11-16T14:53:50.309Z",
    "agent": {
        "ephemeral_id": "00acbc2a-2f96-4c8a-99fe-790f724e9b9e",
        "hostname": "docker-fleet-agent",
        "id": "ac0aba17-80ba-472c-a850-25b8eee31b4a",
        "name": "docker-fleet-agent",
        "type": "metricbeat",
        "version": "7.15.3"
    },
    "azure": {
        "billing": {
            "account_name": "R&D",
            "billing_period_id": "/subscriptions/7657426d-c4c3-44ac-88a2-3b2cd59e6dba/providers/Microsoft.Billing/billingPeriods/20211101",
            "currency": "USD",
            "department_name": "DEpartment",
            "pretax_cost": 0.000002327970961,
            "product": "Bandwidth Inter-Region - Data Transfer Out - North America",
            "usage_end": "2021-11-15T23:59:59.000Z",
            "usage_start": "2021-11-15T00:00:00.000Z"
        },
        "resource": {
            "group": "alex-test-resources",
            "name": "testthis",
            "type": "Microsoft.Storage"
        },
        "subscription_id": "7657426d-c4c3-44ac-88a2-3b2cd59e6dba"
    },
    "cloud": {
        "instance": {
            "id": "/subscriptions/7657426d-c4c3-44ac-88a2-3b2cd59e6dba/resourceGroups/alex-test-resources/providers/Microsoft.Storage/storageAccounts/testthis",
            "name": "alextest223"
        },
        "provider": "azure",
        "region": "CentralUS"
    },
    "data_stream": {
        "dataset": "azure.billing",
        "namespace": "default",
        "type": "metrics"
    },
    "ecs": {
        "version": "8.11.0"
    },
    "elastic_agent": {
        "id": "ac0aba17-80ba-472c-a850-25b8eee31b4a",
        "snapshot": true,
        "version": "7.15.3"
    },
    "event": {
        "agent_id_status": "verified",
        "dataset": "azure.billing",
        "duration": 37147626300,
        "ingested": "2021-11-16T14:53:51Z",
        "module": "azure"
    },
    "host": {
        "architecture": "x86_64",
        "containerized": true,
        "hostname": "docker-fleet-agent",
        "id": "0e45dc0f765dee79aa8992abcd05b189",
        "ip": [
            "192.168.16.7"
        ],
        "mac": [
            "02-42-AC-1F-00-07"
        ],
        "name": "docker-fleet-agent",
        "os": {
            "codename": "Core",
            "family": "redhat",
            "kernel": "4.19.128-microsoft-standard",
            "name": "CentOS Linux",
            "platform": "centos",
            "type": "linux",
            "version": "7 (Core)"
        }
    },
    "metricset": {
        "name": "billing",
        "period": 86400000
    },
    "service": {
        "type": "azure"
    }
}

ECS Field Reference

Please refer to the following document for detailed information on ECS fields.