Orb

Report attributed cloud spend to Orb as events for a billable metric

CostGraph reports each customer’s attributed cloud spend to Orb as events under an event name. A billable metric queries those events, and its price turns them into invoices. The shared model, tag rules, and nightly behavior are on the Billing exports page.

Before you begin

• Create a billable metric that filters on an event name and sums value:

  SELECT SUM(value) FROM events WHERE event_name = 'cloud_cost'
  

• Attach a price to the metric. Price per cent, or divide by 100 in the metric.

• Copy an API key from Settings > Developers.

Connect

1. Connect the account

   In Integrations, click Orb and enter the API key. CostGraph verifies the key against Orb before it saves anything, and stores it encrypted.

2. Bind an event name

   Bind an orb_ tag key to the event name your metric queries, for example cloud_cost. Orb keeps the event name inside the metric’s SQL, so CostGraph can’t list the names for you. Enter it as it appears in the metric.

Orb accepts events under any name. An event name that doesn’t match the metric produces events that no metric counts, so the spend looks reported but bills nobody. Check the first night’s events in Orb against the metric before you rely on it.

Tag spend by customer

The tag value must be an Orb external customer id. That is the stable id from your own system that you set on the Orb customer, not Orb’s internal id. Orb reports an unknown external customer id as a validation failure, and CostGraph records the day with that failure instead of billing it.

Event payload

Each customer-day is one event. Its idempotency_key is derived from the day and the totals, so a retried run counts once. The properties carry value, the amount in cents, and the shared reconciliation fields.

Corrections are sent as the difference and can be negative. The metric must sum value for the total to settle.

Orb behavior

Orb assigns an event to the period its timestamp falls in. A correction that arrives while that period’s invoice is pending is reflected in it. After the invoice is issued, Orb’s backfill recalculates the usage but doesn’t change what was billed. Settle the difference in Orb.