Commvault provides data protection and backup capabilities for workloads across cloud environments. Its backup architecture can organize protected workloads through clients, plans, and storage policies, allowing organizations to define how data is protected, retained, and stored.
The cloud infrastructure supporting these operations generates costs through services such as storage, compute, networking, and data transfers. As backup environments expand across AWS, Azure, and GCP, identifying the costs associated with specific Commvault workloads and protection configurations can become difficult when you rely only on native cloud billing information.
CloudSpend associates cloud billing data with Commvault resources using predefined Commvault tags. This empowers you to analyze backup-related spending according to the logical structure of your Commvault environment, identify the resources contributing to costs, and make informed decisions about backup and storage optimization.
Commvault cost management is the process of tracking, analyzing, and optimizing cloud expenses associated with Commvault backup and data protection resources.
CloudSpend uses Commvault-specific tags to associate infrastructure costs with clients, plans, and storage policies. This gives you a more meaningful view of backup spending than analyzing the underlying cloud resources independently.
Effective Commvault cost management involves monitoring backup spending, understanding how protected workloads contribute to costs, evaluating storage consumption, and identifying changes in backup activity or retention requirements that may affect cloud spending. It also helps teams allocate backup costs more accurately. Costs can be examined according to the Commvault entities responsible for protecting workloads, making it easier to understand spending across different applications, environments, or business units.
CloudSpend connects Commvault resource information with cloud billing data across AWS, Azure, and GCP. This provides a common way to examine backup-related spending even when the underlying cloud services and billing structures differ.
CloudSpend uses the configured Commvault tags to associate cloud resources with their corresponding clients, plans, and storage policies. The resulting cost information can then be analyzed alongside accounts, subscriptions, projects, regions, services, and other available cloud dimensions. This enables you to compare Commvault-related spending across different cloud environments and understand how backup configurations influence infrastructure costs.
For example, an increase in protected workloads may result in greater storage consumption. Changes to a backup plan may also affect the frequency or volume of data being protected. By examining the associated tagged resources and cost trends, you can investigate these changes without manually correlating multiple billing sources.
CloudSpend also provides anomaly detection to identify unusual changes in backup-related spending. Budgets and alerts can be configured to monitor Commvault costs and highlight situations where spending moves beyond expected thresholds.
By connecting cloud billing information with Commvault-specific entities, CloudSpend gives backup and cloud teams greater visibility into how data protection activities contribute to overall cloud spending.
CloudSpend uses the following entities to tag and track your Commvault resources across AWS, Azure, and GCP environments.
| Report category | Report display name | Description | AWS and Azure tag key | GCP tag key | Tag value |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Commvault | Commvault Client ID | The Commvault client ID | commvault:client-id | commvault-client-id | <client-id> |
| Commvault | Commvault Plan ID | The Commvault plan ID | commvault:plan-id | commvault-plan-id | <plan-id> |
| Commvault | Commvault Storage Policy | The Commvault storage policy | commvault:storage-policy | commvault-storage-policy | <storage-policy> |
These tagging entities enable CloudSpend to associate cloud costs with different levels of your Commvault backup environment and provide more detailed cost attribution.
CloudSpend uses the above entities to tag and track your Commvault resources across AWS, Azure, and GCP environments. Each entity provides a different perspective for understanding how backup and data protection activities contribute to cloud costs.
The Commvault Client ID identifies the Commvault client associated with the protected workload. CloudSpend uses commvault:client-id in AWS and Azure and commvault-client-id in GCP to associate cloud costs with the corresponding client. This enables you to examine spending at the workload level and identify clients associated with higher backup infrastructure costs.
The Commvault Plan ID identifies the plan associated with the protected workload. CloudSpend uses commvault:plan-id in AWS and Azure and commvault-plan-id in GCP to group associated costs by the plan. This helps you compare spending across different backup configurations and understand how protection requirements affect cloud resource consumption.
The Commvault Storage Policy identifies the storage policy associated with protected data. CloudSpend uses commvault:storage-policy in AWS and Azure and commvault-storage-policy in GCP to associate costs with the relevant storage policy. This provides visibility into spending associated with the way backup data is stored and managed.
These entities enable you to examine Commvault costs from different levels. Client information can help you identify the workloads generating backup costs, and plan and storage policy information provides additional context around how those workloads are protected and stored.
The separate AWS or Azure and GCP tag keys enable CloudSpend to identify the same Commvault entities across different cloud environments while preserving the tagging conventions used by each provider.
Here are some of the key benefits of the Commvault cost report:
With the Commvault cost report, you get a consolidated view of spending associated with your Commvault backup environment across AWS, Azure, and GCP. The report enables you to examine costs from different perspectives within the backup environment. Client-level analysis can identify workloads with higher protection costs, and plan and storage policy information can provide context about the configuration and storage requirements associated with those workloads.
Follow these steps to view the report:
The Spend Analysis view helps you understand changes in Commvault backup spending and identify the factors contributing to those changes. You can review the total cost for the selected period and compare spending across accounts, subscriptions, projects, and other available cloud dimensions. Cost trends provide a view of how backup spending changes over time and help you identify periods where costs increased significantly.
Analysis at both the service level and resource level provides additional context by showing which underlying cloud services contribute to Commvault-related spending. This distinguishes costs associated with backup storage from those of other infrastructure components involved in protecting workloads.
Commvault-specific tags enable you to investigate these changes from the perspective of the backup environment. You can examine Commvault Client ID costs to identify workloads generating higher spending, compare Commvault Plan ID costs to understand differences between protection configurations, and review Commvault Storage Policy costs to identify storage-related cost patterns. For example, if backup spending increases for a particular client, you can examine the associated plan and storage policy to determine whether the increase corresponds with changes in protection requirements or storage consumption.
Trend information and anomaly detection further help identify unusual cost behavior. These insights enable backup teams to move from identifying a cost increase to understanding the Commvault resources and configurations associated with it.
The Resource Explorer view provides a detailed way to examine Commvault-related costs across the different dimensions available in your cloud environment. You can explore costs by accounts, subscriptions, projects, regions, services, resources, resource groups, and tags. This enables you to compare backup spending across environments and narrow an investigation to a particular workload or protection configuration.
Commvault-specific tags provide additional context during this analysis. The Commvault Client ID can be used to examine costs associated with individual protected workloads. The Commvault Plan ID enables you to compare spending across different protection plans. The Commvault Storage Policy tag isolates costs associated with the storage configuration used for backup data.
You can apply filters to focus the analysis on specific clients, plans, storage policies, regions, or cloud environments. This is useful when you're investigating an unexpected increase in backup spending or comparing the costs of protecting similar workloads.
Resource Explorer complements Spend Analysis by providing a more granular view of Commvault cost attribution. It helps backup and cloud teams understand how spending is distributed across protected workloads and protection configurations, making it easier to identify areas for further investigation and optimization.