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GCP Cost Reviews: A Framework To Work With Your FinOps Tooling

GCP Cost Reviews: A Framework To Work With Your FinOps Tooling

Managing cloud costs effectively is one of the most impactful ways to support our customers. Every quarter, we conduct GCP cost reviews for our clients, a process designed to uncover unused resources, optimize configurations, and identify opportunities to save. These reviews are not just about reducing bills—they’re about ensuring our clients’ infrastructure is lean, efficient, and aligned with their business goals. Here’s a high-level overview of how we approach this work and how it aligns with FinOps as a practice.

What is FinOps?

FinOps, short for “Cloud Financial Operations”, is the practice of bringing together technology, finance, and business teams to manage cloud spending more effectively. It’s not just about cost-cutting—it’s about creating accountability and ensuring that cloud investments deliver maximum value. Our GCP cost review framework aligns closely with the FinOps principles of transparency, optimization, and continuous improvement. By leveraging available FinOps tools, we can enhance the insights and actions we deliver to our clients.

1. Preparing for the Review

Before we dive into numbers and charts, preparation is key. First, we establish clear objectives with our clients. Are they looking to cut costs, optimize performance, or prepare for a new phase of growth? Next, we ensure we have access to all necessary resources: billing consoles, resource inventories, and usage reports. Finally, we set a baseline by analyzing historical billing data. This helps us understand trends and create meaningful comparisons.

Clear Objectives

Are clients looking to cut costs, optimize performance, or prepare for a new growth phase? Setting goals upfront ensures our analysis aligns with business priorities.

Historical Data Baseline

We analyze historical billing data to understand trends and create meaningful comparisons.

Template: Access & Permissions Checklist

Access RequirementStatus
Access to GCP Billing Console
Viewer role for relevant projects
Admin access to billing accounts
Access to resource utilization reports

Example Tools:

  • BigQuery Export for Billing Data
  • Cloud Asset Inventory for resource collection
  • Google Looker Studio for creating visual dashboards

Pro Tip: Use dashboards to visualize key metrics and share progress with stakeholders.

2. Diving Into the Data: Analyzing Costs

Once the groundwork is set, we dig into the data. Here are the areas we typically analyze:

Common Focus Areas

  • Unused Resources: Idle VMs, unattached disks, orphaned IPs, abandoned load balancers.
  • Overprovisioning: Oversized VMs or Kubernetes clusters with excess capacity.
  • Storage Inefficiencies: Files in high-cost storage classes that could move to lower-cost tiers.
  • Discount Utilization: Full use of committed use discounts (CUDs) and sustained use discounts (SUDs).

Template: Cost Analysis Summary Table

ServiceMonthly SpendChange (QoQ)Key Findings
Compute Engine$5,000+10%Underutilized instances in US-East.
BigQuery$3,200-5%Unpartitioned queries causing costs.
Cloud Storage$2,800+15%Move infrequently used files to Coldline.
Kubernetes Engine$4,500+25%Node pools over-provisioned.

Example Tools:

  • GCP Billing Reports for trend identification
  • Google Cloud Recommender for optimization suggestions
  • Stackdriver Monitoring for usage metrics

Pro Tip: Centralize spending data and identify team-specific costs to increase accountability.

3. From Insight to Action: Tailored Recommendations

With the analysis complete, we prepare actionable recommendations tailored to the client’s environment. Examples include:

Actionable Recommendations

  • Rightsizing Resources: Adjust VM sizes, automate scaling, or optimize Kubernetes node pools.
  • Scheduling Downtime: Automate shutdowns for non-production environments.
  • Lifecycle Management: Automatically move infrequently accessed data to lower-cost storage.
  • Query Optimization: Partition and cluster BigQuery queries to reduce costs.

Template: Cost Optimization Action Plan

RecommendationImpact (High/Med/Low)Effort (High/Med/Low)OwnerDeadline
Rightsize Compute Engine InstancesHighMediumDevOpsQ1 2025
Automate VM shutdown schedulesMediumLowDevOpsQ1 2025
Enable storage lifecycle policiesMediumLowInfraQ1 2025
Optimize BigQuery query structuresHighHighDataQ2 2025

Example Tools:

  • GCP Rightsizing Recommendations
  • BigQuery Analyzer Tools
  • Terraform or Cloud Deployment Manager for automation

Pro Tip: Use proper tagging to enable cost attribution by team or project.

4. Enabling Ongoing Monitoring

Cost management isn’t a one-time activity. We work with clients to:

  • Set budgets and configure alerts.
  • Track usage patterns over time.
  • Catch anomalies early and adjust as needed.

Template: Budget & Alerts Configuration

ServiceBudget ThresholdAlert FrequencyContact TeamNext Review
Compute Engine$4,500MonthlyDevOpsApril 2025
BigQuery$3,000WeeklyDataApril 2025

Example Tools:

  • GCP Budgets & Alerts for automated notifications
  • Apptio Cloudability or Spot.io for enhanced FinOps capabilities

Pro Tip: Continuous monitoring enforces accountability and improves forecasting.

5. Delivering Results

The final step is sharing our findings. We compile everything into a quarterly report that includes:

  • An executive summary with high-level trends and recommendations.
  • A detailed breakdown of costs and usage.
  • A prioritized action plan for the next quarter.

Template: Quarterly Cost Review Report

SectionDetails
Executive Summary
  • Quarterly Spend: $15,500 (-5% QoQ)
  • Savings Achieved: $2,300 from optimizations
High-impact Recommendations for Next Quarter
  • Rightsize VMs: Potential savings of $1,000/month.
  • Optimize BigQuery: Save up to 20% on current spend.
Detailed Findings
  • Service-by-Service analysis with visuals (pie charts, bar graphs).
  • Highlights of unused or underutilized resources.
Action Plan
  • Detailed recommendation list with priorities.

Example Tools:

  • Looker Studio for interactive dashboards
  • Excel Templates for tabular reporting

Pro Tip: Include metrics like cost per team or application to improve accountability.

6. Continuous Improvement

After the review, we stay engaged. We track the impact of implemented changes and identify lessons learned. For example, if rightsizing VMs leads to savings, we might explore more aggressive autoscaling thresholds. If storage lifecycle rules work well for backups, we might expand them to include logs and other infrequent-access data.

Template: Post-Review Follow-Up

Change ImplementedSavings RealizedLessons LearnedNext Steps
Rightsize Compute Instances$800/monthAdjust autoscaling thresholds.Monitor usage.
Enabled Storage Lifecycle Policies$300/monthLifecycle rules worked well for backups.Expand to logs.

We also focus on education, helping clients’ teams understand GCP cost management best practices. Empowering teams with the right tools and knowledge is as important as the optimizations themselves.

Why This All Matters

Cloud cost reviews may seem like a numbers game, but they have a direct impact on our clients’ ability to innovate and grow.

By integrating FinOps principles and tools like Kubecost and others, with a structured approach to GCP cost management, we help ensure that every dollar spent on infrastructure contributes to business value.

While savings are a key outcome, the real win is creating an environment where resources are aligned with needs, waste is minimized, and teams can focus on what they do best.