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Using Rule-Based Dimensions to Analyze Cost

Rule-based dimensions are flexible, user-defined dimensions that you can use to view your organization’s cost data categorized in groups that fit your business needs. With rule-based dimensions, you can automatically group costs to a business unit, department, product, project, or any other dimension, and you can combine rules to meaningful categories for cost reporting and analysis.

You can use the rule-based dimensions to create new dimensions to look at your costs from new, meaningful perspectives. These sections provide more information about the uses and limitations of rule-based dimensions.

You can manage the rule-based dimensions by either of the following methods:

Flexera One Role Prerequisite​

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The Manage organization or Manage rule-based dimensions role is required to create and modify rule-based dimensions. For complete descriptions of each role available in Flexera One, see Flexera One Roles.

Uses for Rule-Based Dimensions​

Some potential uses for rule-based dimensions to consider include the following:

  • Cost Center

  • Cost Approver

  • Product Group

  • Environment

  • Team

  • Application

  • Department

  • Division.

For example, a common use case for rule-based dimensions is to create a Department or Environment dimension and define rules to map known account values to your organization’s departments or environments.

Rules Can Change Over Time​

The rules for a rule-based dimension can change over time. For example, you could define a fresh rule list for each calendar month. Use the Rules List to set the Effective Month for each rule list for which you want to maintain a historical view of cloud spending.

Billing Center Support​

Rule-based dimensions are powerful for slicing data across multiple dimensions. They can be used instead of billing centers. However, billing centers are still useful when you need to restrict or permit access to different sets of cost data.

Rule-based dimensions provide the potential for more flexibility and granularity compared to billing center allocations.

  • The rules in rule-based dimensions can refer to other rule-based dimensions, custom tag dimensions, and most other built-in dimensions (like Cloud Vendor Account, Cloud Vendor, and Resource Group). Other dimensions are not allowed.

  • As described earlier, rules can change over time. This allows for a different billing center allocation rule list for each month.

  • Costs can be assigned to billing centers in the bottom of the hierarchy, and they will automatically “trickle up” the billing center hierarchy. This dynamic is much simpler to manage than micro-managing multiple allocation tables.

  • Recommendations can also be assigned to billing centers using rule-based dimensions for allocation. However, recommendations have only two dimensions available for rules to match: Cloud Vendor Account and Resource Group.

Using rule-based dimensions this way would supersede billing center allocation rules—essentially overwriting its results.

Your organization may have existing billing center allocation rules. If you choose to leverage billing center-style rule-based dimensions in place of billing center allocation rules, the rule-based dimensions would take precedence over billing center allocations starting from the month identified as the rule-based dimensions Effective Month.

Limitations​

The following table lists the limitations of the rule-based dimensions created either through the API or in the user interface.

Rule Description LimitationFinOps Customizations APIUser Interface (Rules-Based Dimensions Page)Notes
Cannot use the Cloud Vendor Account Name dimensionThe Cloud Vendor Account Name dimension cannot be used in rule-based dimensions. Instead, find the ID number of the account and use the Cloud Vendor Account dimension.
Create a maximum of 50 dimensionsLimitation existsLimitation existsYou can create a maximum of 50 dimensions either through the API or in the UI.
Create a maximum of 48 rules lists in each rule-based dimensionLimitation existsLimitation existsYou can add up to 48 rules list to a rules-based dimension created either through the API or in the UI.
Maximum number of rules in a rules setLimitation existsLimitation existsYou can add a maximum of 20,000 rules in a rules list. However, the UI displays only 1,000 rules.

Supported Dimensions​

Flexera One has the ability to define rules by a variety of dimensions. A rule's condition expression can check the value of any of the following dimensions:

  • Default dimensions:

    • Availability zone

    • Bill entity

    • Bill source

    • Bill account ID

    • Cloud vendor

    • Cloud vendor account

    • Commitment ID

    • Commitment Name

    • Database edition

    • Database engine

    • Deployment option

    • Instance type

    • Instance type family

    • Invoice ID

    • License model

    • Line item type

    • Meter category

    • Operating system

    • Product order name

    • Region

    • Resource group

    • Resource type

    • Service

    • Service family

    • Usage type

    • Usage unit

  • Any custom tag dimensions

  • Any other rule-based dimensions.