Connecting New Relic to CostReveal, setup guide

New Relic states what your organization consumed, not what it costs: gigabytes ingested, users, and compute capacity units. Turning that into money needs your contract's rates. This guide covers how CostReveal reads New Relic consumption and prices it at the rates on your order form, why every New Relic figure is therefore an estimate, each setup step, how spend is divided among accounts and data sources, and how to explain it by owner.

What the New Relic connection reads

CostReveal reads your organization's consumption, and prices it at your rates:

• Data ingest: the month's billable GB, as New Relic counts it after any free allowance, priced at your GB rate, and divided among each day's accounts and data sources, such as metrics or logs, by the GB each ingested. The parts add up to the month exactly.
• Users: the month's billable full platform and core users, each at your rate for that kind.
• Compute: each day's core and advanced compute capacity units of each account, each at your rate for that kind.

A kind you give no rate for is counted, not priced, so a missing rate never turns into a guessed amount.

Why these figures are estimates

New Relic does not share what it invoices. CostReveal prices consumption at the rates you enter from your order form, so every New Relic figure is an estimate, and Home says so. It is a faithful one: the consumption is New Relic's own count, and the rates are your contract's. But anything your invoice adds, such as a negotiated adjustment, is not in it.

What you need

• A New Relic user key for someone who can see the organization's usage and billing.
• Your organization's reporting account ID, where its consumption is kept.
• Your contract rates, from your order form. The GB rate is required; the user and compute rates are optional.
• An owner or admin role in CostReveal.

Step by step setup

1. Start the connection

In CostReveal, go to Connections and choose Connect next to New Relic.

2. Create a user key

In New Relic, under API keys, create a user key for someone who can see the organization's usage and billing.

3. Enter the account and key

Enter the region, the organization's reporting account ID, and the key.

4. Enter your rates and verify

Enter your rates and their currency: the GB rate, and optionally the rates for full platform users, core users, and core and advanced compute capacity units. Choose Verify and connect. Only the format is checked as you type. When you verify, CostReveal reads the account's consumption before saving anything. If something is wrong, it says which: a key New Relic does not know in that region, a user who cannot read the account, or an account with no consumption.

The key is stored encrypted and never shown again. Deleting it in New Relic ends access at once.

Changing your rates

When your contract changes, enter the new rates. The months the next read covers, the current and previous month, are priced again in full with them; a month is never part old rates and part new.

Freshness and history

New Relic records consumption by the hour. CostReveal reads every six hours, and reads the current and previous month each time; the first read also brings in the twelve months before the current one, as far as New Relic holds them. Where New Relic holds no older months, Connections says how far back it reached, and each read asks again.

Connection states

Under Connections, the connection is always in one of four states:

• Setup not finished: the details have not been verified yet.
• Waiting for first data: the key was verified, and the first read is due.
• Connected: consumption was read and the latest read succeeded.
• Needs attention: the latest read failed, for example because the key was deleted. Everything already read is kept.

How New Relic spend is explained

• Direct: the service, the kind of consumption, such as data ingest or users, which New Relic states itself.
• Inferred: the team, feature or customer, when an allocation rule names the owner of an account. New Relic consumption carries no tags, so rules are how it is explained.
• Allocated: a share of a cost an allocation rule divides, by fixed percentages, evenly, or in proportion to what each owner already explains.
• Unknown: spend no rule explains. It is shown as unknown, never spread across teams.

Data ingest is already divided among accounts and data sources by the GB each ingested, and compute among accounts by their capacity units, so a rule on an account explains exactly that account's share.

How figures are checked

Every figure is New Relic's consumption at your rates. A change to a month already read is recorded as a correction that keeps what was said before, and attribution runs again. Data ingest is divided so its parts add up to the month exactly, and attribution on every dimension must add up exactly to the ledger.

New Relic does not state what it invoices, so there is no second source to compare against, and Home marks New Relic figures as estimates.

Getting more of New Relic spend explained

1. Write a rule per account that belongs to one team.
2. Split a shared account with a rule, so shared observability is allocated in the open.
3. Enter every rate you have, so users and compute are priced, not only counted.
4. Look at Explore by account and service, to see which account's ingest moved.

Troubleshooting

• Verify says New Relic does not know the key. Check you chose the region the organization is in.
• Verify says the user cannot read the account. Create the key for someone who can see the organization's usage and billing.
• Verify says the account has no consumption. Enter the organization's reporting account ID, where its consumption is kept.
• Users or compute show as counted, not priced. Enter a rate for that kind.

Using New Relic figures in CostReveal

Once New Relic spend is read, it appears everywhere the rest of your spend does:

• Explore groups it by provider, service, account, region, team, feature, customer or any custom dimension you define, and can filter to any of them. Every row shows how much of it is direct, inferred, allocated or unknown.
• Budgets can be set on New Relic as a provider, or on any one of its services, with alerts when spend nears or passes the limit, or when the month is forecast past it.
• Insights forecasts the month once it has three complete days, with a range and a confidence, and flags a day when a service spent outside its normal range: the median of the same weekday over the four weeks before.
• Reports export the figures as CSV or a PDF, once or on a weekly or monthly schedule.
• Estimates, said plainly. Because New Relic figures are priced at your rates, Home marks them as estimates, and they never claim to match an invoice. They are still exact to the consumption New Relic states, divided so the parts add up to the month.

Security and access

• What CostReveal holds. The user key, and the rates you entered. It is encrypted with AES-256-GCM before it is stored, under keys that can be rotated, and it is never shown again after you enter it.
• What it is used for. Reading only. CostReveal never changes anything in your account.
• Who can change the connection. Only owners and admins in CostReveal can connect, change or remove a connection, and each of those actions is recorded in the organization's audit log, with who did it and when.
• Isolation. Every figure is stored in CostReveal's database with your organization isolated by PostgreSQL row level security, enforced in the database itself, below the application.
• Ending access. Delete the key in New Relic. CostReveal keeps every figure already read and says that new data has stopped.

Removing the connection

Removing the connection under Connections deletes every figure it brought in from the project. Delete the key in New Relic too. To stop reading without removing anything, delete the key: CostReveal keeps every figure already read and tells you new data has stopped.

Frequently asked questions

Why are New Relic figures estimates? New Relic states consumption, not what it invoices. CostReveal prices that consumption at the rates you enter from your order form, and Home marks the figures as estimates.

Which rates do I need? The GB rate is required. Rates for full platform users, core users, and core and advanced compute capacity units are optional; a kind with no rate is counted, not priced.

What happens when our rates change? Enter the new rates. The current and previous month are priced again in full with them.

How is New Relic spend split by team? With allocation rules, by account. New Relic consumption carries no tags.

How fresh are the figures? New Relic records consumption by the hour, and CostReveal reads every six hours.

Is the key read only? CostReveal only ever reads consumption with it. The key is stored encrypted and never shown again.

Keep reading

• Connecting Datadog to CostReveal: costs by organization and product, checked against Datadog's total.
• Connecting Grafana Cloud to CostReveal: billed usage divided among stacks.
• Connect New Relic in the docs: the reference for every setup step.