Frequently Asked Questions

Data & refresh

Why isn’t the data real-time?

Cirrova reads cost data directly from the Microsoft Azure Cost Management API. Microsoft refreshes that data approximately every 4 hours, and real-time cost data is not available from the API.

The figures you see in Cirrova reflect Azure’s last published snapshot, which may be up to four hours behind the current moment. The timestamp of the most recent refresh is shown at the top of the Dashboard so you always know how fresh the data is.

How far back does cost history go?

It depends on your plan:

• Core — 90 days of cost history.
• Control — 365 days of cost history.
• Enterprise and Partner — longer retention windows are available; contact us to discuss your requirements.

Why do my costs look slightly different to what I see in the Azure portal?

A few things can cause a difference between what Cirrova shows and the figures in the Azure portal:

• Azure credits. If a subscription has Azure credits applied, Microsoft deducts them before costs are recorded in the Cost Management API. Cirrova reflects those post-credit figures, so a resource covered by a credit will show as $0 rather than its list price.
• Reserved Instance costs. Cirrova shows actual reservation charges — the cost recorded at the point of purchase — rather than amortising them across individual resources. This matches the default view in the Azure portal but may differ from tools that spread reservation costs across the billing period.

If you’re seeing a discrepancy you can’t account for, get in touch and we’ll help you investigate.

Does Cirrova store my cost data?

Yes. Cirrova stores cost and usage metric data fetched from the Azure Cost Management API. This is what allows Cirrova to maintain cost history, compute baselines for anomaly detection, and serve dashboard and report queries quickly without hitting the Azure API on every page load.

For information on where that data is stored, see Security & data storage below.

Azure connectivity

What Azure permissions does Cirrova need?

Cirrova requires three built-in Azure roles:

• Reader
• Cost Management Reader
• Monitoring Reader

These can be assigned at any level of your Azure hierarchy — per subscription, per management group, or at the tenant root management group. Assigning at the tenant root (as the Getting Started guide recommends) means the roles are inherited by all subscriptions and management groups beneath it, which is the simplest approach for most organisations. Assigning at a lower scope gives you finer-grained control over which parts of your estate Cirrova can see.

No owner or contributor rights are needed, and your infrastructure remains completely untouched.

Can I connect multiple tenants or subscriptions?

Yes, with limits that depend on your plan (see the feature comparison):

• Core — one tenant.
• Control — up to five tenants.
• Enterprise and Partner — higher limits are available; contact us to discuss your requirements.

Within each tenant, Cirrova connects at the subscription level. If your Azure estate is organised around billing accounts, you can connect each subscription under that billing account individually, giving you equivalent billing-account-level visibility within Cirrova.

Can I restrict which subscriptions Cirrova can see?

Yes. Because Cirrova connects per subscription, access is controlled at the Azure permission level — simply grant Cirrova read access to the subscriptions you want it to see and omit the rest. You are never required to grant access to your entire estate.

What happens if my service principal credentials expire or are revoked?

If Cirrova can no longer authenticate with Azure, it will surface a prominent error in the platform and send an alert to all organisation owners and tenant admins. Data will stop refreshing until the credentials are renewed.

To avoid an interruption, set a reminder to rotate your service principal secret before it expires. The Connecting Azure guide covers how to update credentials when needed.

Does Cirrova support Azure Government or sovereign cloud regions?

Support for Azure Government and sovereign cloud regions is available on Enterprise and Partner plans through self-hosted and managed deployment options. Contact us to discuss your environment and requirements.

Security & data storage

Does Cirrova ever write anything to my Azure environment?

No. Cirrova is entirely read-only. It only reads cost and usage data from the Azure Cost Management API and never makes changes to your Azure resources, configuration, or billing settings.

Where is my data stored?

By default, all data is stored in the Australia East region. If you have data residency or sovereignty requirements, self-hosted and region-specific deployment options are available on Enterprise and Partner plans. Contact us to discuss your requirements.

Features

What’s the difference between anomaly detection and a budget alert?

They serve different purposes and complement each other:

• Anomaly detection is automatic and baseline-driven. Cirrova learns the normal cost pattern for each resource from its recent history and raises an alert when something deviates from that pattern — without you needing to define any thresholds. It catches unexpected changes you might not have thought to budget for.
• Budget alerts are threshold-driven. You set a spending limit for a scope — a subscription, resource group, tag collection, or your whole tenant — and Cirrova notifies you when actual or forecast spend approaches or exceeds it. Budgets are useful for enforcing known limits; anomaly detection is useful for catching surprises.

Both types of alert can be routed through the same Alerting channels.

How does anomaly detection establish what “normal” looks like?

Cirrova builds a baseline from the last 7 days of cost data for each resource. If more history exists, it extends the comparison window further to improve statistical confidence — a resource with six months of stable history will have a tighter, more reliable baseline than one that was provisioned last week.

New resources with no prior cost history are handled as a special case: any charge on a previously-zero resource is raised as a High severity anomaly immediately, since there is no baseline to compare against.

You can tune how sensitive the detector is — filtering out small absolute amounts or small percentage changes — without affecting how the baseline is calculated. See Configuring sensitivity.

Can I filter costs by Azure tag?

Yes. Tag-based filtering is available throughout Cirrova — on the Dashboard, in Cost Explorer, and when defining budgets. You can filter at any level of your estate: subscription, resource group, or individual resource.

Does Cirrova make recommendations about Reserved Instances?

Yes. Where Cirrova identifies a resource whose usage pattern suggests it would benefit from a Reserved Instance commitment, it surfaces a recommendation with an estimated saving. These appear in Optimisation Insights alongside other cost-reduction recommendations.

Account & setup

How long after connecting Azure will I start seeing data?

In most cases, data will appear within one hour of connecting a subscription. The exact time depends on the size of your tenant and the number of resources — larger environments with many subscriptions and resources may take a little longer for the initial sync to complete.

Can I invite team members? Is there a limit?

Yes, and there is no seat limit. Cirrova is priced as a flat fee per plan — not per user — so you can invite as many team members, finance colleagues, or stakeholders as you need without any additional cost. See Access Control for how to manage roles and permissions.

I manage Azure for multiple clients. Is there a multi-tenant view?

Yes. The Partner plan is built for MSPs and resellers managing multiple client environments. It includes a multi-organisation management console, full white labelling, branded reporting, and reseller rights — with each client organisation kept fully isolated from the others. Get in touch and we’ll put together a proposal tailored to your client base.