Cloud computing is revolutionizing the way businesses operate, but it can sometimes come at a significant cost. This is where Infracost comes into play! Infracost offers a powerful way to visualize and understand your cloud costs when using Terraform. With this tool, you can see a clear cost breakdown before making any changes, ultimately allowing for better financial management and decision-making.

What is Infracost?

Infracost is a tool that integrates seamlessly with Terraform and allows engineers to view cloud cost estimates and apply FinOps best practices right within their workflows. This useful tool can be run in the terminal, integrated into VS Code, or added to your pull requests, providing instant feedback on potential costs at different stages of development.

Getting Started with Infracost

Ready to dive in? Here’s how you can get started with Infracost!

• Follow our quick start guide to set up Infracost easily.
• Familiarize yourself with the various CI/CD integrations to post cost estimates directly in your pull requests, providing your team with a safety net for discussions around costs.

Visualize Cost Breakdown

Once you’ve integrated Infracost into your workflow, you’ll be able to run the command infracost breakdown to visualize your costs. To explain this command in analogy, think of it as checking the price tag of items in a shopping cart before heading to the cash register. This way, you can see how much each item (or resource) in your configuration contributes to the total bill (or monthly cost).

infracost breakdown

Monitor the Difference in Costs

With Infracost, you can also utilize the infracost diff command. This command is similar to comparing your monthly energy bill to see how much you’re spending compared to the previous month. By using this command, you can quickly recognize if your planned changes will increase or decrease your overall costs.

infracost diff

Infracost Cloud

For organizations looking for a more robust solution, check out Infracost Cloud. This SaaS product builds on top of the open-source version and enhances your experience with CI/CD integrations, helping you apply best practices directly. For instance, it can suggest switching AWS gp2 volumes to gp3 for better performance and cost savings.

Troubleshooting Common Issues

If you encounter issues while using Infracost, here are a few troubleshooting tips:

• Make sure your Terraform configuration files are correctly configured.
• Ensure that the correct permissions are set for Infracost to access your cloud provider resources.
• Check the Infracost version for updates; you might be experiencing issues that are resolved in a newer release.

For more insights, updates, or to collaborate on AI development projects, stay connected with fxis.ai.

Conclusion

Infracost is an invaluable tool for engineering and finance teams looking to manage cloud costs effectively. By visualizing costs and assisting with best practices in the development workflow, it empowers teams to make more informed decisions. At fxis.ai, we believe that such advancements are crucial for the future of AI, as they enable more comprehensive and effective solutions. Our team is continually exploring new methodologies to push the envelope in artificial intelligence, ensuring that our clients benefit from the latest technological innovations.

Additional Resources

Infracost supports over 1,100 Terraform resources across popular cloud platforms including AWS, Azure, and Google. Additionally, Infracost can help estimate usage-based resources, such as AWS S3 or Lambda!

Join our community Slack channel to connect with other users and contributors, and explore how you can contribute to this excellent tool!