Cost Explorer (Gantt)
Cost Explorer (Gantt) provides a time-first visualization of cloud infrastructure cost mapped directly to real cloud resources. Instead of grouping cost by service and region, this view presents a resource-level financial timeline that allows engineers to reason about cost using the same mental model they use to design, provision, debug, and operate infrastructure.
Supported Cloud Providers
Cost Explorer (Gantt) currently supports:
AWS - EC2 instances, EBS volumes, Elastic IPs, Lightsail instances
Azure - Virtual Machines, Managed Disks, Public IPs, Load Balancers
Prerequisites
Before using Cost Explorer (Gantt), ensure that your cloud account is added to MechCloud.
Resource Context Filtering
Cost Explorer supports filtering by Resource Context. There are three ways to use this:
No context - Select this option to view costs for all resources that the cloud account can discover, regardless of any context tagging.
Stateless IaC provisioned resources - If you provision infrastructure using Stateless IaC with a specific Resource Context, those resources are automatically tagged and will appear when you select that context.
Manually tagged resources - You can add the
mc-resource-contexttag to any existing resource with the Resource Context name as the value. These resources will then appear when you select that context in Cost Explorer.
Accessing Cost Explorer (Gantt)
Cost Explorer (Gantt) is available under the Infrastructure section in MechCloud. Navigate to Infrastructure → Cost Explorer (Gantt) to access the timeline view.
Selecting Time Range and Month
Cost Explorer supports visualization of cloud cost for the last three months, including the current month. Only a single month can be visualized at a time.
Use the month selector at the top of the screen to choose the month you want to analyze. When you switch months, the timeline reloads to display the selected month's cost data.
For historical months, the timeline displays final billing values. For the current month, the timeline shows both accumulated cost and projected estimates.
Live Only vs All Resources (Current Month Only)
For the current month, Cost Explorer provides two viewing modes:
Live Only mode shows only resources that are currently active. Use this to check the cost of your running infrastructure.
All Resources mode includes both active and terminated resources. Terminated resources are displayed using striked-out text. Use this to see costs for resources that were terminated during the current month.
For previous months, only a single view is available showing all resources (both active and terminated) for that period.
Understanding Month-to-Date and Estimated Monthly Cost
For the current month, Cost Explorer displays two values:
Month-to-date cost: Actual accumulated spend up to now
Estimated monthly cost: Projected total if current usage continues
For non-current months, both values are identical since billing data is complete.
Reading the Gantt Timeline
The horizontal axis represents time across the selected month, while each row represents a real cloud resource. Each bar on the timeline represents a continuous runtime window for a resource. The length of the bar indicates how long the resource was active, and the value displayed on the bar represents the total cost incurred.
Understanding Tooltip Information
Hovering over any bar in the timeline displays a detailed tooltip containing:
Start time and end time
Total duration
Unit price
Incurred cost
For active resources, the tooltip also shows the estimated monthly cost.
Filtering and Scoping
Cost Explorer (Gantt) provides multiple filters:
Team: Switch between organizational scopes
Cloud Provider: Select AWS or Azure
Cloud Account: Isolate cost to specific accounts
Region: Focus on geographic cost distribution
Context: Filter by Resource Context or select "No context" to view all resources
Typical Usage Patterns
Cost Explorer (Gantt) is commonly used for:
Investigating unexpected bill spikes
Debugging zombie infrastructure
Understanding partial-month workloads
Correlating deployments with cost changes
Optimizing storage retention and compute utilization
Provider-Specific Documentation
AWS Cost Explorer - Setup and supported resources for AWS
Azure Cost Explorer - Setup and supported resources for Azure
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