Cloud Billing and Costs#
Unlike many Northwestern-provided services that require payment up front for a set amount of resources, such as storage, you pay for cloud services after you use them, based only on what you use. For example, instead of paying a yearly fee for a set storage quota, you pay only for the storage you are actively consuming. Depending on your usage patterns, this billing model can save you money but make prices variable and difficult to predict.
At Northwestern, cloud usage charges are tracked against either your chartstring or your Blanket Purchase Order (PO), depending on your provider. You can monitor spending at any time through Kion , Northwestern’s cloud finance management platform. See the Kion section below for details.
This page covers how cloud charges are billed and tracked at Northwestern, and strategies to keep your costs under control. For cost details specific to virtual machines, object storage, and managed databases, see Picking Cloud Services.
Billing and Tracking#
Your cloud costs are paid from either your chartstring or your Blanket PO. This section explains how you are billed, where to see what you were charged, and how to track your spending in Kion.
How You Are Billed#
Each month, your cloud usage costs are totaled and the amount is automatically charged to either your chartstring or your Blanket PO. The charges appear in NUFinancials, where you or your department’s financial administrator can review them.
If your spending exceeds your estimate, your account keeps running and charges continue to post to your chartstring or Blanket PO. The Cloud Enablement Team will contact you if your spending is running above the expected amount from your original estimate. See Requesting a Cloud Account for how to adjust your funding.
Each year, the Cloud Enablement Team contacts account holders to update their Blanket PO.
NUFinancials is your official record of what you were billed. Use Kion to see your spending trends and where your costs are coming from, so you can catch unexpected charges early.
Track Costs in Kion#
Kion is Northwestern’s cloud finance management platform, available to all Northwestern cloud account holders. It provides a unified view of spending, budgets, and resource usage across AWS, Azure, and GCP accounts, all tied directly to your chartstring or Blanket PO. For a full walkthrough, see the How to Use Kion knowledge base article.
Key features include:
Project Spending: View total spend against your active budget and monthly spending trends. See Reporting in the Northwestern IT Knowledge Base for details.
Monthly Spend Reports: Break down charges by service, region, account, or time period; reports can be saved and scheduled for regular delivery by email. See Spend Reports below for how to set one up.
Savings Opportunities: Automated checks that identify underused resources and recommend ways to reduce costs. Review recommendations carefully before acting, as Kion does not account for all usage patterns such as peak vs. non-peak workloads.
Enforcements: Spending threshold alerts. Northwestern IT is automatically notified when a project exceeds 50% of its monthly budget. Additional custom alerts can be requested.
Resource Inventory: View active cloud resources across your accounts by service, region, and type (feature currently in preview). See Resource Inventory in the Knowledge Base for details.
Getting Access to Kion#
Kion access is provisioned automatically with your Northwestern cloud account. To log in, navigate to cloudgate.northwestern.edu using the Chrome browser and sign in with Northwestern University SAML using your NetID and password.
If you need to add a team member to Kion, access is managed through Azure Active Directory
groups with the format AAD-Kion-<department>-<name>. Group owners can add members via the
Azure Portal or the
Self-Service AD Tool
under My Office 365 Groups. See
Users
in the Knowledge Base for more on managing Kion user access.
If you need Kion access and cannot be added by a group owner, email
servicedesk@northwestern.edu with
#cloudops in the subject line and your cloud account name.
Kion Spend Reports#
Kion’s spend reports give you an at-a-glance view of your spending. Build a report filtered to your project or cloud account, segment it by service, region, or time period, then save it to view anytime or schedule it to be emailed to you or your team on a recurring basis, such as a monthly PDF of your spend.
Spend reports arrive on the schedule you set; they do not notify you when your spending spikes. Use Kion spend reports for a regular view of your spending, and use your cloud platform’s budget alerts to get an email when spending crosses a threshold.
For steps to build, save, and schedule a spend report, see Spend Reports in the Northwestern IT Knowledge Base.
Cost Control Strategies#
Use the following strategies to estimate, monitor, and reduce your cloud costs.
Estimate Costs Before You Start#
Before requesting a Northwestern cloud account, you must estimate your expected costs. These calculators are the recommended starting point. Each provider offers a pricing calculator to model your workload before deployment:
These tools let you model configurations, compare instance types, and estimate the impact of storage, data transfer, and other services on your budget. If you are unsure how to build an accurate estimate for your workload, request a Research Cloud Consult before submitting your account request.
For a step-by-step walkthrough with exact field values for virtual machines, object storage, or managed databases, see the Cost Calculator section on each service’s page under Picking Cloud Services.
Set Up Budget Alerts#
To receive your own warning, use your cloud platform’s cost alerting tool. Each platform has one, and you can use it to set a budget alert that emails you when your spending crosses a threshold you choose. The following example sets a single alert at 80% of a monthly budget.
Open the AWS Billing and Cost Management console and choose Budgets in the navigation pane.
Click Create budget, choose Customize (advanced), select Cost budget, then click Next.
Set the following fields:
Field
Value
Budget name
A descriptive name, such as your project or grant name
Period
Monthly
Budget renewal type
Recurring budget
Budgeting method
Fixed
Budgeted amount
Your expected monthly spend
Click Next, then Add an alert threshold and set the following:
Field
Value
Threshold
80
Threshold type
% of budgeted amount
Trigger
Actual
Email recipients
Your email address; add more, comma-separated (up to 10)
Optional: repeat step 4 to add a second threshold, such as 100%, for a follow-up warning.
Click Next through the remaining steps, then click Create budget.
In the Azure portal , go to Cost Management + Billing, select your subscription, then choose Budgets.
Click Add and set the following fields:
Field
Value
Scope
Your subscription or resource group
Budget name
A descriptive name, such as your project or grant name
Reset period
Monthly
Budget amount
Your expected monthly spend
Click Next to configure alerts, then set the following:
Field
Value
Alert type
Actual
Cost threshold (%)
80
Email address
Your email address; add up to 5 total
Optional: add a second alert at 100% by repeating step 3 with a new threshold.
Click Create.
In the Google Cloud console , open Billing, then choose Budgets & alerts.
Click Create budget and set the following fields:
Field
Value
Name
A descriptive name, such as your project or grant name
Time range
Monthly
Projects
Your project, or select all projects tied to your account
Click Next, choose Specified amount, and enter your expected monthly spend.
Click Next and review the default threshold rules (50%, 90%, and 100% of budget), adjusting them if needed.
Leave Email alerts to billing admins and users enabled, then click Finish.
Alerts notify you by email; they do not stop spending or shut down resources on their own. If you receive an alert, see Reduce Ongoing Costs for ways to reduce your spend.
Reduce Ongoing Costs#
Once your resources are running, use the following guidance to keep costs down:
Deprovision unused resources. An idle running instance costs the same as a fully utilized one; there is no discount for low usage while it is powered on. Delete or remove virtual machines, storage volumes, and other resources you are no longer using. Stopping a virtual machine pauses compute charges, but other costs, such as storage or reserved IP addresses, can continue to accrue. To stop all charges for a resource, delete it.
Choose the right region. Northwestern IT recommends the following regions to ensure proper support: AWS US East 2 (Ohio), Azure North Central US, and GCP us-central1.
Monitor resource usage. Use Kion to track spending across your accounts. For more detail on a single platform, use AWS Cost Explorer, Azure Cost Management, or GCP billing dashboards to identify waste.
Right-size your resources. Avoid over-provisioning compute or storage; provision only what your workload requires.
Apply auto-scaling. Automatically adjust resources to match demand rather than maintaining peak capacity at all times.
For help with your cloud costs or budget, see Getting Support.