The CloudMonitor Analytics Engine is the “smarts” and AI behind your cost insights. It extracts and analyzes your cost data and prepares it for reporting in Power BI. It is free to install from the Microsoft Azure Marketplace and installs into one of your Azure Subscriptions.

This means that your cost data is processed by your infrastructure inside of your cloud tenancy - it never leaves!

Go to the Azure Marketplace to install the Analytics Engine. Note: you will need to sign in with your Microsoft work or school account: *(Right-click on the link)*<https://azuremarketplace.microsoft.com/en-us/marketplace/apps/data-drivenai1581501556049.cloudmonitor-analytics-engine>

Click **"Get It Now"** and sign in if required.

Choose the "1-Month Trial" or select a different plan. Click **Continue**.

1-Month Trial
LITE License: Monitor up to $100K USD of annual cloud spend
BASIC License: Monitor up to $250K USD of annual cloud spend
PROFESSIONAL License: Monitor up to $700K USD of annual cloud spend
ENTERPRISE License: Monitor up to $1.5M USD of annual cloud spend
ENTERPRISE License: Monitor up to $5M USD of annual cloud spend

CloudMonitor has a Free tier for monitoring 3 or less Azure Subscriptions. It scales with your business. This is also very useful for trialing it out first before buying. You can monitor 3 Subscriptions for as long as you like with no licensing costs.

You can view our plans and pricing by checking out this link: <https://cloudmonitor.ai/pricing/>

Select the same plan you selected before and click on "Create". This will take you through a series of questions to personalise your installation.

You need to have an **Azure subscription with admin rights** to create Resource Groups and resources in order to proceed to the next step.

Choose an Azure Subscription in your environment where you would like to install CloudMonitor. This is NOT the Subscriptions that you want to monitor, just where you want to put the CloudMonitor Application. 

For example, if you are trialing it, you might install it on a DEV Subscription, whereas if you are monitoring production resources you might want to install it on a Production Subscription.

In our example below we are using a Subscription called "IE - MPN".

We recommend always creating a new Resource Group.

Enter "CloudMonitor" as the Resource Group name and click "OK" (We used "CloudMonitor-RG" in our example below).

Choose a Region where you want to install CloudMonitor. It makes sense to choose the region closest to your other Azure Subscriptions that you will be monitoring.

Fill in the Application Name as "CloudMonitor" or something similar and click on Next.

The Tags tab is for entering any tags required by your IT policy. This is an optional step although we highly recommend that you tag your resources. We'll skip over this to the Service Principal tab.

The next step is to create the Azure AD Service Principal that reads the cost metadata for the Azure Subscriptions that you want to monitor. You will need to have the permissions to create Service Principals in Active Directory, or you could ask your Admin to create it and provide you with the Client ID and Secret. We will assume you have the required permissions.

Choose **"Create new"** and click on **Change Selection.**

Enter a name like "CloudMonitor-SP" and make sure "**Accounts in this organizational directory only**" is selected, then click on **Register**.

Note: Please remember the name you selected for this Service Principal as you will need it later on.

Go to the Certificates & Secrets tab in the left -hand menu and click **"New client secret"**.

Fill in the "Description" field - we recommend something like "CloudMonitor Client Secret" and choose the amount of time that you want this secret to be valid for.

3 months is more secure but you will need to remember to change it when it expires or CloudMonitor will stop working. We **recommend 12 months** to avoid the effort of expiring secrets. **Click on "Add"** to proceed.

The next step is important. The VALUE is required and not the ID.

Click on the clipboard to copy the Secret Value and store it in a safe place, like a Password Vault. You will not be able to copy this value again once you close this window, and we need it for a later step.

Click "Create CloudMonitor Cost Analytics - FinOps on Autopilot" to go back to the installation wizard.

Create CloudMonitor Cost Analytics - FinOps on Autopilot

You will notice the Service Principal that you created is now selected. Paste in the Client Secret Value from the clipboard you created in the previous step.

and paste it again below to confirm that it is correct, then click on Next.

This information box links to additional content. Activate it to display the content.
CloudMonitor uses a Service Principal that you provide to connect to the Azure Cost APIs. In the step below, first choose 'Select Existing' or 'Create New' depending on if you have a Service Principal already or not. Click here to read more.
Choose a new or existing Service Principal and click on 'Change selection' to proceed
Service principal type
Select existing
Create new
Service principal
CloudMonitor-SP
Change selection
Client Secret (Do not type this in. Copy the Client Secret from the Service Principal screen)
Get the Client Secret for an existing Service Principal or make a new one. This is not something that you type in - it comes from the Service Principal page.
Confirm Client Secret

The Configuration tab is all about your company configuration. 

Enter your company name first.

Fill in the "Start Month/Day of your Fiscal Year (MMDD)" field. 

For example, in Australia, the Financial Year is from the 1st of July to the 30th of June, so you would enter 0701 (July the 1st). In the UK, it is from the 6th of April, so you would enter 0406.

Fill in the "Reporting Currency" field. If your Azure billing is in Indian Rupees, put INR. If it is US dollars, put USD.

Select your Primary Timezone. This is used for optimizing the performance of CloudMonitor as costs for Azure are refreshed in your timezone/region.

Fill in the "Administrator Account" field. It is important that this user is a valid email in your Azure Active Directory. This account will be the first Administrator in the CloudMonitor Admin App who can invite other users and promote users to be Admins.

Fill in the "Default Owner Email" field. The "Owner" is the user who is responsible for Azure Resources, which is sometimes different from the technical owner/created-by person. 

CloudMonitor uses an algorithm to work out who the Owner is, and they can be reassigned in the Admin App. If no Owner is found, the Default Owner is used.

Enter the email of the person who will be connecting Power BI to the CloudMonitor Analytics Engine. 

We will send all communications around the technical installation of CloudMonitor to this person. It is not used for anything else.

Please ensure that you have read and understand how Microsoft charges for Infrastructure and check this box when you are happy to continue.

Click on "Next" to proceed to the next tab.

The final tab is a summary of the deployment. Read through the details and check the Terms and Conditions if you would like to proceed.

Click "Create" to start the CloudMonitor deployment on Azure.

The deployment can take between 10 and 45 minutes. Azure will update you when it is complete.

After successful installation of the CloudMonitor Analytics Engine, please move on to Step 2 to configure Azure Synapse. [Step 2: Configure Azure Synapse : CloudMonitor Helpdesk](https://helpdesk.cloudmonitor.ai/support/solutions/articles/51000369255-configure-cloudmonitor-synapse)

Download the CloudMonitor Analytics Engine in Azure