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Connect a Huawei Cloud Data Source

Huawei Cloud is one of the providers KOSTRA supports, and connecting an account works the same way as any other cloud. Once connected, KOSTRA imports your Huawei billing, discovers your resources, and begins generating recommendations alongside your other providers. This guide walks through the flow — useful because Huawei Cloud is the provider most often missing from other FinOps tools.

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Before you begin

You need a Huawei Cloud access key pair — an Access Key ID (AK) and a Secret Access Key (SK) — for the account you want to analyze. Create or locate these on the Huawei Cloud console under My Credentials → Access Keys. When you create an access key, the SK is provided once in a downloadable CSV file, so keep that file to hand. The credentials only need to read billing and describe resources. As a best practice, use a dedicated key with read-oriented permissions rather than an administrator key.

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Connect the account

  1. In the KOSTRA left navigation, open Data Sources.
  2. Select Connect data source.
  3. Choose Huawei Cloud as the provider.
  4. Give the data source a clear name — for example, Huawei Production or the Huawei account name. This is how the account appears throughout KOSTRA.
  5. Enter the Huawei Cloud Access key ID (AK) and Huawei Cloud Secret access key (SK).
  6. Select Connect.
KOSTRA validates the credentials as you connect. It first checks whether the key can read permanent access-key details (for root or administrator keys) and falls back to listing IAM projects for scoped sub-user keys, so both key types are supported. If validation fails, KOSTRA reports the reason so you can correct the key or its permissions.

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What KOSTRA does automatically

Huawei billing is served from two global endpoints — one for China regions and one for international regions. You do not need to know which applies: KOSTRA probes both during connection and stores the working billing endpoint with the account. Once connected, KOSTRA schedules the first billing import and resource discovery. Discovery enumerates your Huawei Cloud resources through the official SDKs across the regions your account can access — Elastic Cloud Server, Elastic Volume Service volumes and snapshots, Object Storage Service buckets, Elastic IPs, RDS instances, Elastic Load Balance, and images. Billing records from the BSS service are imported and distributed into daily entries so trends line up with your other providers.

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Reseller and partner accounts

Some Huawei reseller and partner accounts have their BSS line-item amounts suppressed. If KOSTRA detects that billing returns zero amounts, it can derive a synthetic bill from your discovered resources and Huawei’s on-demand rating, so you still get cost visibility. This behavior is automatic; no extra configuration is required.

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Verify the connection

After connecting, confirm the account is working:
  1. Return to Data Sources and check that the Huawei account shows a recent successful import.
  2. Open Cost Explorer to see Huawei spend appear as billing imports complete.
  3. Open Resources to confirm discovered Huawei resources are listed.
Billing and discovery run on a schedule, so allow a full cycle for the first complete data set to populate. Recommendations for the account appear after the first optimization run.

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Troubleshooting

  • Validation fails immediately. Re-check the AK/SK for typos, and confirm the key is active in My Credentials → Access Keys.
  • No costs after connecting. Confirm the key can read BSS billing; a describe-only key without billing permission discovers resources but shows no spend.
  • Fewer regions than expected. KOSTRA discovers the regions the key’s IAM projects grant access to; broaden the key’s project access to widen coverage.