A clear understanding of these concepts will help you navigate Pelanor and get the most from its cost-optimization features.

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Vendor-Specific vs. Vendor-Agnostic Terminology

Pelanor lets you analyse cost data from two complementary angles:

PerspectiveWhen to UseExamples
Vendor-specificQuery or group by each cloud provider’s native fields.
  • AWS Product Name
  • Azure Billing Profile
  • Kubernetes Namespace
  • ECS Service
  • Databricks Task Name
Vendor-agnosticApply FOCUS-aligned, cross-cloud terminology that works the same in AWS, Azure, and GCP.Usage Category · Service Name · Entity Type

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Properties vs. Metrics

ConceptPurposeTypical UsesExamples
PropertiesDescriptive metadata collected from Pelanor integrations.
  • Group data (e.g. by vendor or service)
  • Filter results (e.g. by Account ID or tag value)
  • Add context columns in tables
  • Service Name
  • Entity Category
  • Snowflake Table
MetricsNumeric measurements—Cost is the primary one.
  • Display in charts or tables alongside Cost
  • Build queries such as “Cost > $500”
  • Cost
  • CPU Utilization
  • Data Transferred

Pelanor auto-collects metrics from its platform and service integrations. You can further extend the metrics list by pushing Custom Metrics into Pelanor.

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Resources vs. Entities

LayerDefinitionExamples
ResourcesItems that appear directly in billing exports.ARN (AWS) · Global Name (GCP) · Region · Account
EntitiesLogical groupings or subdivisions of resources.
  • Node groups of VMs
  • Kubernetes namespaces
  • Databases separate from their host clusters

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Dimensions & Segments

Dimensions provide business-aligned views of cost data—think “cost per X” (Tenant, Business Unit, Feature, etc.).
Each dimension contains multiple Segments, which define individual values and their selection rules.

After creation, dimensions appear under Custom Dimensions in the property tree and are available for grouping and filtering everywhere in Pelanor.

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Ways to Create Dimensions

MethodBest For
ManualA small, mostly static list (e.g. Departments)
Tag-based (“Batch”)Leverage existing tags and properties to auto-populate segments (example: you already have a Tenant tag with a reasonable coverage percentage)
APIAutomating updates or syncing from external systems such as CRMs

For API details, see the Dimensions & Segments section of the Pelanor API reference.