Manage Cloud Computing Expenses (Tutorial)
 | Abbreviations Key |
| AIFI | Allen Institute for Immunology |
| CPU | central processing unit |
| GB | gigabyte |
| HISE | Human Immune System Explorer |
| IDE | integrated development environment |
| USD | U.S. dollars |
At a Glance
This document describes how to manage your cloud computing expenses for HISE IDEs. It explains how to track personal expenses and compare your actual usage to individual and team quotas. Finally, it shows managers how to track expenses for their direct reports and manage organizational spending.
Cloud Computing Components
You incur cloud computing costs when you use HISE IDEs to store and process data. Even a stopped IDE incurs costs. Specific items that contribute to your monthly computing expenses include the following:
| Item | Costs based on |
| CPUs | Processing time (sec) in a running instance |
| Data-disk storage | Amount of provisioned space (GB), even if the storage is unused or the instance is stopped |
| Memory | Amount of memory allocated to a running instance (GB/sec) |
Best Practices for Efficient Cloud Computing
Cloud computing costs are tracked at the personal (individual) and organizational (team or partner) levels. For details, see Understand and View Your Accounts and Projects (Tutorial). To minimize expenses, use the available cost management tools outlined here, and follow these best practices:
Stop IDE instances when possible. Stopped instances incur cloud computing costs only for disk space—not for CPUs or memory.
Delete idle instances when they're no longer needed. Google storage buckets cost less than disk storage in the IDE.
- If you're an administrator, follow the principle of least privilege, granting permission to access cloud resources only to those who need it.
For detailed cost management advice from Google, see the recommendations in Monitor and Control Cost. For questions about your individual or organizational quotas, contact your billing administrator or email immunology-support@alleninstitute.org.
IDE Billing
A quota is the maximum amount (in USD) an individual or organization is allowed to spend on cloud computing within a given time period. To monitor your team's quota, read your email notifications, and compare your personal IDE spending with the median team spending (see Step 1, below).
HISE users are notified by email as they approach various individual and team monthly caps. For example, you're notified by email when you reach 50% of your monthly quota. If you max out your monthly quota, you can't start a new IDE instance. In addition, any running instances are stopped, and active notebook jobs are canceled and returned to the queue, where they remain until the following month.
Instructions
To track your usage and compare it with that of other IDE users on your team, or to manage billing for your direct reports, follow the steps below.
Track personal billing
1. Navigate to HISE, and use your organizational email address to sign in.
2. Choose the accounts whose expenses you want to see. For instructions, see Understand and View Accounts and Projects (Tutorial).
3. In the upper-right corner of your screen, click your name.
4. From the drop-down menu, choose Billing.
5. On the Billing page, click the Personal IDE Billing tab.
A. To compare your actual spending with your monthly quota (USD), review the PERSONAL IDE SPENDING graphic. The preceding example shows that so far this month, $10.55 (2.11%) of the user's monthly $500 quota has been spent.
B. To compare your team's actual expenses with its monthly quota (USD), review the ADMIN IDE SPENDING graphic. The preceding example shows that the user's team or partner (ADMIN) has spent $779.99 of its monthly $2,000 quota.
C. To learn what percentage of the team's quota you've spent (in this case, 0.53%), as well as review the median monthly expenses for individual team members (in this case, $34.97), see the explanation below the ADMIN IDE SPENDING graphic.
6. Stay on the Personal IDE Billing tab, and scroll to the next section, Personal Spend by IDE Instance.
A. To see expenses for each of your IDEs, click the tabs, such as anne-test.
B. To see the expenses incurred by your private folder, click the private-folder tab (not pictured).
C. To see a breakdown of expenses for a given date, hover over the specified date along the horizontal axis.
7. Stay on the Personal IDE Billing tab, and scroll to the next section, Total Personal vs. Median Partner Spending for the Last [X] Months.
The chart shows 12 months of billing data unless you've used HISE for < 1 year. For example, this user has used HISE for only 8 months. |
A. To compare your spending with the median amount spent by members of your team, review the bar chart.
B. To see the rough amount (USD) of your spending, look at the vertical axis.
C. For the precise dollar amount of spending in a single month, hover over the selected month. This user, for example, spent $66.66 in November, compared with median team spending of $37.56 the same month.
8. An alternative way to track IDE spending by instance is to go directly to the IDE:,
A. From the top navigation menu in HISE, click RESEARCH.
B. From the drop-down menu, choose NextGen IDE.
C. In the lower-right corner of the card for each running or stopped IDE, note the monthly spending (in this case, $138.70), or click the card for details.
Manage organizational billing (selected users)
Some features are visible only to admin users. If you're an admin user, you'll see an ADMIN tab to the left of your name (or in the vertical menu at smaller screen sizes).
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1. In the upper-right corner of your screen, click your name, and choose Billing from the drop-down list.
2. On the Billing page, click the Organizational Billing tab.
3. Review your account information, and choose the billing period:
A. Near the upper-left corner, find your account name.
B. Near the upper-right corner, the billing period is displayed. To change it, click the arrow to the right, and choose a new date from the drop-down list.
C. To produce an invoice for a given billing period, select the billing period and click Download Invoice.
4. Near the top left, review the Total Cost (monthly, in USD) for your organization (in this case, $3,807.11). Then review the following = breakdown of costs for file storage, databases, IDEs, pipeline processing, data transfer, and overhead.
5. To the right of the cost breakdown, review the same information in a pie chart format. To see a particular expense on the chart, hover your mouse over that sector.
6. Review the graph of the Top Spenders in [Your Organization], and work with these users to contain costs. For example, remind the top spenders to stop their running instances when the IDEs are not in use, and ask them to delete stopped instances that are no longer needed. For details, see Best Practices for NextGen IDE Users.
7. If you're an admin user, periodically check the Partner Quota Overview to see how close each partner organization is to reaching its monthly cloud billing quota.
8. To see expenses for individual users within your organization, review the IDE Spend Across Accounts section:
A. Click the arrow next to a user's email address to display the following data:
i. Instance ID. List of each user's instances
ii. Partner. Name of the partner with which each user is affiliated
iii. Billing Category. Category options are as follows: ide, nextgen-ide, ide-disk, private-folder
iv. Cost per instance. Monthly cost in USD
B. To find a given user, click Sort by Username, and type the first few letters of the user's email address.
9. To keep an eye on spending trends, periodically review the IDE Spend for Months Preceding [Date] graphic.
View or change organizational data
1. From the top navigation menu, click ADMIN, and choose All Organizations from the drop-down list.
2. On the All Organizations page, click the card for your organization.
3. Update your organization:
A. On the Organizations > [Your Organization] page, click Update Organization.
B. In the appropriate field, change the name of the organization, add or change the description, or add or delete publication reviewers or billing users.
C. Click Submit.
Related Resources
Understand Accounts vs. Projects