HOW TO: Install Ylastic CostAgent on Windows

Although one can simply schedule the Ylastic CostAgent as a task on Ylastic itself ( see Can Ylastic host the cost agent for me? ) I decided I didn’t want to do this as it involves giving Ylastic the master account username and password for each of our AWS accounts. Although we probably trust Ylastic this is not best practice. Therefore I decided to install the CostAgent on my work station (I’ll move it to a server later) and schedule it. I quickly discovered that the main documentation only covered installation on Linux, didn’t find anything else out  there hence this post.

1. Install Strawberry perl from strawberryperl.com
2. cmd> cpan
3. cpan> install App::Ylastic::CostAgent

4. Create CostAgent config file next to ylastic-costagent.bat called config.ini (ini format) more info here
   Example:
   ylastic_id = 1234567890abdcef1234567890abcdef12345678
   [AWS Account Number]
   user = [email protected]
   pass = trustno1

   [4421-0000-3510]
   user = [email protected]
   pass = trustno1

5. To run c:\cost_agent_install_path\ylastic-costagent.bat config.ini (ylastic-costagent.bat -h for help). Create a schedule task to automate.
6. Optionally you may create a folder for temp report downloads called ‘ylastic-costagent-temp’ (-d param) and for logs ‘ylastic-costagent-logs’ (-l param).

UPDATE 28/09/2011: It would seem that if you use the -d param on Windows the files upload with the full path and hence don't work. Not confirmed if it works using the default download path. Upload includes the full path in the file name on Ylastic servers, therefore doesn't work. Bug logged [https://rt.cpan.org/Public/Bug/Display.html?id=71332](https://rt.cpan.org/Public/Bug/Display.html?id=71332)

ref:

  
  
3.  [Ylastic Spending Analysis](http://support.ylastic.com/kb/spending-analytics)
  
  
  
7.  [app-ylastic-costagent README](https://github.com/dagolden/app-ylastic-costagent/blob/master/README.INSTALL)