Production & Non Production Cost

Production and Non-Production cost segmentation allows you to clearly separate business-critical workloads from development, testing, and staging environments.

While this feature is powered by the same backend engine as Business Hierarchy, it provides a simplified and standardized way to classify workloads based on environment.

This ensures:

• Clean executive reporting

• Better budget planning

• Accurate savings tracking

• Clear production accountability

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Why Environment Segregation Matters

Without clear environment classification:

• Production and test workloads get mixed

• Optimization opportunities are unclear

• Savings tracking becomes distorted

• Finance cannot distinguish operational vs experimental spend

Separating production from non-production enables:

• Accurate margin analysis

• Smarter optimization decisions

• Reduced risk during cost-cutting

• Better forecasting

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How It Works

Production & Non-Production classification uses tag-based rule definitions.

You define what qualifies as:

• Production

• Non-Production

Based on:

• Tag Key / Value

• Account

• Resource Name

• Service

• Region

The system then categorizes all workloads accordingly.

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Example Classification Logic

If:

• Tag environment = prod

• OR Tag env = production

• OR Account name contains live

Then:

→ Classify as Production

If:

• Tag environment = dev

• OR Tag env = staging

• OR Resource name contains test

Then:

→ Classify as Non-Production

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Supported Rule Conditions

You can define rules using:

• Native Cloud Tags

• Account Name

• Subscription Name

• Project ID

• Resource Name

• Service

• Region

• Usage Type

Rules follow AND logic within a rule block.

Multiple rule blocks can be defined.

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How It Is Different from Business Hierarchy

Feature	Business Hierarchy	Production & Non-Production
Purpose	Maps cost to business ownership	Segregates cost by environment type
Depth	Up to 4 levels	Binary classification (Prod vs Non-Prod)
Resource Mapping	Leaf-level cost centre	Rule-based environment grouping
Use Case	BU / Team / Project reporting	Operational environment reporting

Internally, both use the same allocation engine. Production & Non-Production is simply a simplified, purpose-built segmentation layer.

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Reporting Capabilities

Once configured, you can:

• View total Production spend

• View total Non-Production spend

• Compare Prod vs Non-Prod trends

• Filter dashboards by environment

• Track savings by environment type

• Monitor policy violations separately

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Best Practices

To ensure accurate classification:

• Standardize environment tag keys across teams

• Avoid multiple meanings for the same tag

• Review unmatched resources monthly

• Align environment definition with engineering policy

Recommended tag keys:

• environment

• env

• stage

• deployment

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Common Multi-Cloud Examples

AWS

• environment = prod

• aws:autoscaling:groupName contains live

• Account name contains production

Azure

• Environment = Production

• Subscription name contains Prod

• Resource group contains Live

GCP

• Label env = prod

• Project ID contains production

OCI

• Tag namespace Operations.Environment = Prod

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Why This Feature Is Important

Production workloads:

• Directly impact revenue

• Require higher reliability

• Must be optimized carefully

Non-production workloads:

• Can be aggressively optimized

• Can tolerate scheduling policies

• Are ideal for automation-based savings

This separation enables smarter FinOps decisions.

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Governance Alignment

Environment classification also enables:

• Production-only alerting

• Non-production shutdown policies

• Environment-specific workflow automation

• Scoped access controls

If you have not configured cost centres yet, refer to:

👉 Cost Centres & Business Hierarchy

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Summary

Production & Non-Production Cost gives you:

• Clean workload segregation

• Accurate financial visibility

• Better optimization control

• Executive-level clarity

It is simple to configure, but powerful in impact.