Costs & Billing

Cloud resources are billed on a pay-as-you-go model — you pay for what you use, typically by the hour or second. This section explains how billing works in the Campus Cloud, the discounts available to UCSB, and how to keep costs under control. For how cost responsibilities are divided between you, the Cloud Team, and the provider, see Shared Responsibility.

• Baseline Costs
• Monitoring Your Costs
  • UCSB Custom Dashboards
  • Budget Alerts
• Purchase Orders and Invoicing
• Pricing, Discounts & Credits
  • UC Enterprise Discounts
  • Pricing Calculators
  • Pricing Models
  • Research Credits
  • Teaching & Classroom Credits
• Cost Optimization Tips

Baseline Costs

These baseline services include:

• Audit log storage
• Security Hub / Defender for Cloud / Security Command Center
• GuardDuty (AWS)
• CloudTrail (AWS)

Monitoring Your Costs

Each provider offers built-in tools for tracking your cloud spending:

• AWS: AWS Cost Explorer — in the console, go to Billing → Cost Explorer.
• Azure: Azure Cost Management + Billing — in the portal, go to Cost Management.
• GCP: GCP Billing Reports — in the console, go to Billing → Reports.

UCSB Custom Dashboards

The Cloud Team maintains custom cost dashboards that aggregate spending across Campus Cloud accounts:

• AWS — Amazon QuickSight: A centralized dashboard showing cost and usage data across all Campus Cloud AWS accounts, broken down by account, service, daily trend, and tag. Data is updated daily from AWS Cost and Usage Reports (typically a 24–48 hour lag). The QuickSight account name is ucsb-campus-cloud.

  To sign in:

  1. Open quicksight.aws.amazon.com in an Incognito / Private browser window (required to avoid SSO session conflicts).
  2. Enter account name: ucsb-campus-cloud
  3. Sign in with your UCSB email address (<netid>@ucsb.edu).
  4. Navigate to Shared Folders to find the Campus Cloud cost dashboards.

Use an Incognito window

QuickSight uses a different authentication flow than the AWS Console. Opening it in your normal browser session may redirect you incorrectly. Always use Incognito / Private mode. </div>

• Azure — Cost Management Dashboard: A custom Azure cost reporting tool maintained by the Cloud Team.

Dashboard access must be provisioned separately from your cloud account. To request access, open a ServiceNow ticket with your cloud account ID and UCSB NetID.

Budget Alerts

Set up a budget alert in your account so you are notified before your spending exceeds expectations. Instructions are in each provider’s First Steps guide.

• For AWS, use the Fixed Monthly Budget with Notification product in the Service Catalog — see AWS First Steps.
• For Azure, use Azure Cost Management — see Azure First Steps.
• For GCP, use Cloud Billing budgets — see GCP First Steps.

A budget alert does not automatically stop your account from spending — it sends a notification. Monitor your account regularly during the first few weeks of a new workload.

Purchase Orders and Invoicing

Cloud costs are tracked against the Purchase Order you created in Gateway. Monthly usage is invoiced approximately three weeks after the end of each month. Keep your PO active until all invoices have been processed — see Close an Account for details on the closure timeline.

If your costs are approaching your PO limit, renew or increase your PO before it expires. Contact your departmental financial administrator and the Cloud Team.

Pricing, Discounts & Credits

UC Enterprise Discounts

UCSB participates in system-wide enterprise agreements with all three providers. You receive these discounts automatically — no action required.

Pricing Calculators

Before starting a project, estimate your monthly spend using the official calculators:

• AWS Pricing Calculator
• Azure Pricing Calculator
• GCP Pricing Calculator

Note that the calculators show list prices. Your actual bill will reflect UC enterprise discounts.

Pricing Models

Research Credits

All three providers offer programs that award cloud credits or research funds to academic researchers. If you receive an award, use a Campus Cloud account to redeem it — either create a new account or migrate an existing personal account.

Teaching & Classroom Credits

Faculty can apply for cloud credits to give students hands-on experience in coursework. These programs provide credits to the instructor for distribution to the class — they are not self-service student accounts.

AWS does not offer a direct credits-to-faculty program; AWS Academy provides free curriculum with a Learner Lab sandbox but requires institutional membership and uses pre-built courses.

Programs change frequently — check each provider’s site for current eligibility, deadlines, and award amounts.

Cost Optimization Tips

• Reserved Instances / Committed Use Discounts: If you have stable, predictable workloads (e.g., a long-running research cluster), committing to 1–3 years can reduce compute costs significantly.
• Spot / Preemptible VMs: For fault-tolerant batch workloads, Spot VMs are 60–80% cheaper than on-demand.
• Rightsizing: Review provider recommendations (AWS Compute Optimizer, Azure Advisor, GCP VM Manager) to downsize over-provisioned resources.
• Storage lifecycle policies: Move infrequently accessed data to cheaper storage tiers (S3 Glacier, Azure Cool/Archive, GCS Nearline/Coldline).