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Tag, You’re It!

Implementing Infrastructure Tagging in Four Easy Steps

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Jonathan White, Cloud FinOps Analyst

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Survey Current State

Design Desired State

Implementation and Remediation

Governance and Documentation

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Survey�Current State

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Survey Current State

  • Identify stakeholders

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  • Infrastructure
  • Service Delivery
  • Accounting
  • FinOps
  • Security
  • Application Owners

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Survey Current State

  • Identify stakeholders

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  • Define project goals�

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  • Track & analyze costs across multiple dimensions
  • Associate resources with applications, services, & owners
  • Automate the application of tags
  • Standardized repository for keys & values
  • Naming conventions & limitations
  • Mandatory vs optional tags
  • Establish tag owners & permissions
  • Define tagging policies & processes (governance)

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Survey Current State

  • Identify stakeholders

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  • Define project goals

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  • Review existing tag usage�

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  • Cost tracking (Apptio Cloudability)
  • Backups (Commvault)
  • Owners (Who pays for the resources)
  • Development lifecycle (prod, dev, qa, test, poc)
  • Service functionality (Citrix, Azure PaaS services)

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Survey Current State

  • Current sources of truth

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  • Department values coming from multiple sources, not updated as names change
  • Application values made up by customers or engineers
  • No central repository for tag values
    • Azure tag values stored in Azure
    • VMware values stored on a spreadsheet
  • Slightly different value names refer to the same thing

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Survey Current State

  • Current sources of truth

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  • Tag administration access

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  • All VMware and Storage team members given full access to VMware tag administration
  • All MS Infrastructure team members can set values at RG level (which flow down to resources)
  • Most VMware customers can add, edit, or remove tags/values
  • Only Azure customers with RG Contributor rights can administer tags

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Survey Current State

  • Current sources of truth

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  • Tag administration access

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  • Use cases for tagging�

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  • Resource Management
  • Access Management
  • Cost Management
  • Operations Support
  • Security
  • Automation
  • Governance

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Design�Desired State

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Design Desired State

  • Create tag key & value naming conventions
  • 50 tag keys per resources maximum
  • All lowercase
  • Letters & numbers only
  • Underscore (_) used to designate multiple functions
  • 63 characters maximum
  • Key names must start with a letter and contain no spaces

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Design Desired State

  • Create tag key & value naming conventions

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  • Define tag keys and values�

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  • ONLY create the tags you need
  • Limit your mandatory tags
  • Application: What’s on it?
  • Department: Who owns it?
  • Environment: How important is it?
  • Role: What does it do?
  • Backup: Is it being backed up?
  • ExpenseID: Who is paying for it?
  • Team: Who manages it?

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Design Desired State

  • Create tag key & value naming conventions

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  • Define tag keys and values

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  • Establish tag repository and sources of truth

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Design Desired State

  • Create tag key & value naming conventions

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  • Define tag keys and values

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  • Establish tag repository and sources of truth

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Design Desired State

  • Create tag key & value naming conventions

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  • Define tag keys and values

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  • Establish tag repository and sources of truth

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  • Utilize existing sources whenever possible
  • No Department SOT at UCF
    • Created my own based on phone tree database
    • Eventually updated to Workday cost centers
  • No Application SOT at UCF
    • Created my own based on existing values, with additional rules for increased consistency
  • Existing ServiceNow tables for other tags
  • ServiceNow Tag repository table SOT for remaining tags (usually only a few values)

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Implementation�& Remediation

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Implementation & Remediation

  • Identify existing values to update
  • Crosswalk old values to new values
  • Check for application dependencies
  • Document new tag values to existing infrastructure
  • Decision was made not to update existing VMware tag values

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Implementation & Remediation

  • Identify existing values to update�
  • Update existing resources
  • Due to resource limitations, values were updated manually instead through automation
  • Add new tags to existing resources
  • Actual value updates occurred through scripting
  • AWS values not changed, instead using Cloudability “business dimensions” to reflect updated values

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Implementation & Remediation

  • Identify existing values to update�
  • Update existing resources

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  • Implement process for tagging new resources

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  • Updates to existing ServiceNow requests and workflows
  • Values manually added to resources instead of through automation
  • Manually collecting tag value data instead of requiring requestors to provide within forms

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Implementation & Remediation

  • Identify existing values to update�
  • Update existing resources

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  • Implement process for tagging new resources

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  • Updates to existing ServiceNow requests and workflows
  • Values manually added to resources instead of through automation
  • Manually collecting tag value data instead of requiring requestors to provide within forms

Cloud

GitHub

CMDB

ServiceNow

Owner

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Governance�& Documentation

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Governance & Documentation

  • Establish change management process
  • Allow for non-standardized tag keys?
  • How do new tag keys become standardized?
  • Who is allowed to add values to existing keys?
  • Who can add/edit/remove tags from resources?
  • Tag Governance Committee?

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Governance & Documentation

  • Establish change management process�
  • Monitor for tag compliance
  • Create policies/scripts in each platform to enforce mandatory values
  • Report on resources not compliant with tagging policies and, if necessary, take action
  • Use 3rd party tools to retroactively add or correctly tags resources (ex: CLDY BD)

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Governance & Documentation

  • Establish change management process�
  • Monitor for tag compliance�
  • Document project results
  • Tag keys & attributes source location
  • Tag key & value naming conventions
  • Change management policies
  • Tag enforcement definitions
  • Remediation guidelines
  • Make sure documentation is easily accessible to those responsible for tags

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Summary

  1. Survey Current State
    • Stakeholders
    • Project goals
    • Existing tag usage
    • Current sources of truth
    • Tag administration
    • Tagging use cases�
  2. Design Desired State
    • Naming conventions
    • Tag keys and values
    • Tag repository & sources of truth

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  1. Implementation & Remediation
    • Identify existing values to update
    • Update existing resources
    • Create process for new resources�
  2. Governance & Documentation
    • Change management
    • Tag compliance
    • Document results

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jonathan.white@ucf.edu

Azure – Define your tagging strategy�https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cloud-adoption-framework/ready/azure-best-practices/resource-tagging

AWS – Tagging best practices�https://docs.aws.amazon.com/whitepapers/latest/tagging-best-practices/tagging-best-practices.html

GCP – Labelling your resources�https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/gcp/labelling-and-grouping-your-google-cloud-platform-resources

Apptio – 5 Best Practices for Building a Cloud Tagging Strategy�https://www.apptio.com/blog/cloud-tagging-best-practices/