Wasted Resources Overview Report

The Azure Wasted Resource Overview report provides a high-level summary of unused or underutilized resources across your Azure environment. Its main purpose is to help you quickly identify areas of waste, enabling cost savings, better resource management, and operational efficiency.

To generate the Azure Wasted Resources Overview report, do the following:

  1. Follow the menu sequence: REPORTS BY FUNCTION -> Domain-specific Reports -> Microsoft Azure Subscription -> Wasted Resources -> Overview in the eG Reporter interface.

  2. Figure 1 will then appear. Pick a criterion for analysis from the Analyze by list. Using this report, you can analyze the configuration or state changes to Azure resources that are part of a zone. The options provided by the Analyze by list box are discussed hereunder:

    • Component: Select this option to choose the component(s) from across all the managed components in the environment.

    • Zone: Pick this option if the components chosen are part of a zone. Then, choose a Zone. Also, indicate whether the components within the sub-zones of the chosen zone are also to be considered for report generation, by selecting an option from the Include Subzone list.

      Figure 1 : Selecting the criteria for the Azure Wasted Resources Overview report

  3. Select the Component Type for which you wish to see the overview of wasted resources.

  4. The Components list will then be populated with the components that match the Analyze By criteria specified earlier. From this list, select the components for which the report is to be generated.

  5. Then, specify the Timeline for the report. You can either provide a fixed time line such as 1 hour, 2 days, etc., or select the Any option from the list to provide a From and To date/time for report generation.

    Note:

    For every user registered with the eG Enterprise system, the administrator can indicate the maximum timeline for which that user can generate a report. Once the maximum timeline is set for a user, then, whenever that user logs into eG Reporter and attempts to generate a report, the Timeline list box in the report page will display options according to the maximum timeline setting of that user. For instance, if a user can generate a report for a maximum period of 3 days only, then 3 days will be the highest option displayed in the Timeline list - i.e., 3 days will be the last option in the fixed Timeline list. Similarly, if the user chooses the Any option from the Timeline list and proceeds to provide a start date and end date for report generation using the From and To specifications, eG Enterprise will first check if the user’s Timeline specification conforms to his/her maximum timeline setting. If not, report generation will fail. For instance, for a user who is allowed to generate reports spanning over a maximum period of 3 days only, the difference between the From and To dates should never be over 3 days. If it is, then, upon clicking the Run Report button a message box will appear, prompting the user to change the From and To specification.

  6. In addition to the settings discussed above, this report comes with a set of default specifications. These settings are hidden by default. If you do not want to disturb these default settings, then you can proceed to generate the report by clicking the Run Report button soon after you pick the criteria for generating the report. However, if you want to view and then alter these settings (if required), click on the button. The default settings will then appear in the More Options drop down window (see Figure 2). The steps below discuss each of these settings and how they can be customized.

    Figure 2 : The default settings for generating the Azure Wasted Resources Overview report

  7. Specify the start time and end time for report generation against the Time Period field (see ).

  8. eG Enterprise allows users to generate desired reports for a specific time period. In large environments, while generating reports for long time periods, say a few weeks to months, report generation was found to slow down, owing to the large volume of data being processed. If users needed to generate many such reports quickly, the slowdown compelled them to generate these reports one after another, thus affecting the speed of their operations, and consequently, their productivity. eG Enterprise now includes a background processing feature that will enable users to process multiple reports, spanning long time periods in the background, while allowing them the bandwidth to generate short-term reports in the foreground. This way, users can generate multiple reports with little-to-no loss of time. To schedule background processing of a report, select the Background Save - PDF option from the Report Generation list. In this case, a Report Name text box will appear, where you would have to provide the name with which the report is to be saved in the background. To process reports in the foreground, select the Foreground Generation - HTML option from this list.

    Note:

    • The Report Generation list will appear only if the EnableBackgroundReport flag in the [BACKGROUND_PROCESS] section of the eg_report.ini file (in the {EG_INSTALL_DIR}\manager\config directory) is set to Yes.
    • The default selection in the Report Generation list will change according to the Timeline specified for the report. If the Timeline set is greater than or equal to the number of days specified against the MinDurationForReport parameter in the [BACKGROUND_PROCESS] section of the eg_report.ini file, then the default selection in the Report Generation list will be Background. On the other hand, if the Timeline set for the report is lesser than the value of the MinDurationForReport parameter, then the default selection in the Report Generation list will be Foreground. This is because, the MinDurationForReport setting governs when reports are to be processed in the background. By default, this parameter is set to 2 weeks - this indicates that by default, reports with a timeline of 2 weeks and above will be processed in the background.

  9. Finally, click the Run Report button.

    Figure 3 : The Azure Wasted Resources Overview report showing wasted resources and their costs

  10. The Azure Wasted Resources Overview report (see Figure 3) then appears and reveals the following details:

    • The Summary section provides a detailed view on the count of total resources, count of wasted resources out of total resources, the percentage of resources that were wasted, the cost incurred for the wasted resources, and a doughnut chart representing the split up of wasted resources filtered by location.

    • The Overview section provides a detailed view on the split up of each resource type and the cost spent on these resources. By clicking the count alongside the resource type, the Wasted Resources Details report for the specific resource type will appear. Similar report can be also retrieved by selecting the specific resource type from the Resource Type drop down in Wasted Resources Details report.

      Figure 4 : Detailed view of resource type in Wasted Resource Details report