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Virtual Tags

Virtual Tags are custom tags created within the platform to help you organize, filter, and report on cloud resources—even if those resources don't have native tags applied. They provide flexibility in how you assign metadata to resources, helping improve visibility, cost attribution, and governance.

Why this matters: real-world tagging is rarely clean — some resources were never tagged in the first place, and the ones that were often use inconsistent keys and values (`Env`, `ENV`, `Environment`) depending on who created them. Fixing that at the source across every cloud account is a much bigger project than most teams can take on. Virtual Tags let you standardize or backfill tagging inside Mavvrik itself, so cost allocation and reporting work correctly without needing a company-wide tagging cleanup first.

This shows up differently depending on your role:

  • FinOps managers use Rule-Based tags to retroactively standardize years of inconsistent tagging across the whole environment, without waiting on engineering to re-tag every resource at the source.

  • Engineering leads use Standard tags to backfill attribution on resources they can't or don't want to modify directly — third-party-managed resources, or ones where changing real tags risks breaking automation that depends on them.

You can create two types of Virtual Tags:

  • Standard – Manually assign a specific tag key and value to a defined set of resources.

  • Rule-Based – Automatically generate or standardize tags based on defined logic, conditions, or patterns.

Virtual Tags do not modify the actual resource tags in your cloud provider. Instead, they live within the platform and are applied virtually to support better analytics and reporting..

Steps to create a Virtual Tags

  1. Login to Mavvrik

  2. Click on Menu

  3. Navigate to the Admin section on the sidebar and select "Virtual Tags."

Open Virtual Tags from the Admin menu
Open Virtual Tags from the Admin menu

Creating a Standard Virtual Tag

Standard Virtual Tags allow you to manually assign a specific tag key and value to selected resources for a defined time period. Follow the steps below to create one:

1. Navigate to Create Virtual Tag

Open the Virtual Tag creation panel. You'll see three tabs at the top: Setup, Scope, and Rule.

2. Select Tag Type

In the Setup tab:

  • From the Type dropdown, select Standard.

  • Enter the desired Key and Value for your tag.

    • Example: Key = Environment, Value = QA

  • Optionally, add a Description to explain the purpose of the tag.

  • Define the Start Month and End Month to set the active period for this tag.

Click Next to proceed.

3. Define Tag Scope

In the Scope tab:

  • Choose the Data Source (e.g., Cloud, AI, K8s, VMware,SaaS).

  • Select filter options such as:

    • Provider (e.g., AWS, Azure, GCP)

    • Billing Account

    • Usage Account

    • Resource Group

    • Location

  • You can use Basic or Advanced filters based on your tagging needs.

  • Optional: Enable Dynamic Filter for more flexible targeting.

4. Create the Tag

Once all fields are filled out:

  • Click Create to save your Virtual Tag

  • The tag will be applied to all matching resources within the selected scope and date range.

  1. New Virtual Tag is created and displayed as shown below.

Review the newly created virtual tag
Review the newly created virtual tag

After creating the Virtual Tags, click on "Run Ingestion" and wait for the process to complete. Once done, perform a hard refresh on the page.

Run ingestion after creating the virtual tag
Run ingestion after creating the virtual tag

If you configure invalid tag parameters using basic and advanced filters error message is displayed.

Review the invalid virtual-tag filter error
Review the invalid virtual-tag filter error

Creating a Rule-Based Virtual Tag

Rule-Based Virtual Tags allow you to automatically generate, clean up, or standardize tags using smart logic such as tag key/value mappings or RegEx patterns. This reduces manual effort and improves tag consistency across your cloud environment.

You can use Rule-Based Virtual Tags to:

  • Standardize inconsistent tag keys and/or values

  • Create dynamic tags based on resource attributes using RegEx

  • Apply complex tagging logic that adapts to your environment

1. Navigate to Create Virtual Tag

Open the Virtual Tag creation panel. You'll see three tabs: Setup, Scope, and Rule.

2. Select Tag Type

In the Setup tab:

  • From the Type dropdown, choose Rule Based

  • Enter an optional Description for your tag

  • Set the Start Month and End Month to define the active period of the rule

  • Click Next to proceed

3. Define Tag Scope

In the Scope tab:

  • Choose the Data Source relevant to your tag (e.g., Cloud, K8s, AI, Databricks, MongoDB etc.)

  • Use Basic or Advanced filters to define the resources this rule applies to

  • Filter options include:
    • Provider
    • Billing Account
    • Usage Account
    • Resource Group
    • Location

  • (Optional) Enable Dynamic Filter for attribute-based matching

  • Click Next to continue

4. Choose a Rule Type

In the Rule tab, select the logic that fits your tagging needs. Available options include:

  • Standardize Tag Keys Only
    • Use when you have inconsistent tag keys like Env, ENV, or Environment
    Example: All keys are standardized to ENVIRONMENT, while keeping their values (e.g., prod, dev) unchanged

  • Standardize Tag Values Only
    • Use when tag keys are consistent but values vary
    Example: Values like prod-root, prod-tenant are standardized to prod, while keeping the original key (Environment)

  • Standardize Tag Keys & Values
    • Use when both tag keys and values are inconsistent
    Example: env or EnvEnvironment, and qa-root, qa-tenantQA

  • Dynamic Virtual Tags
    • Use when you want to extract tag values from resource attributes using RegEx.
    Example: From usage_type:BoxUsage:t4g.medium, extract t4g.medium as the tag value for the key instance_type

  • List of fields customers can use in dynamic virtual tags:

  1. Provider

  2. Billing Account

  3. Usage Account

  4. Resource Group

  5. Category

  6. Location

  7. Service Category

  8. Service

  9. SKU

  10. Cost Type

  11. Billing Entity

  12. Instance Type

5. Finalize and Create

Once your rule is fully configured:

  • Click Create to save and apply the rule

  • The system will evaluate all matching resources and apply the virtual tag based on the logic and scope you defined

Steps to Edit Virtual Tags

  1. Click on Menu

  2. Navigate to the Admin section on the sidebar and select "Virtual Tags."

Open Virtual Tags from the Admin menu
Open Virtual Tags from the Admin menu
  1. Click on Edit icon

Select a virtual tag to edit
Select a virtual tag to edit
  1. Make the changes as per requirement

Update the virtual-tag configuration
Update the virtual-tag configuration
  1. Click on Update button.

Steps to Delete Virtual Tags

  1. Click on Menu

  2. Navigate to the Admin section on the sidebar and select "Virtual Tags."

Open Virtual Tags from the Admin menu
Open Virtual Tags from the Admin menu
  1. Click on Delete icon

Select a virtual tag to delete
Select a virtual tag to delete
  1. Click on Delete button

Confirm deletion of the virtual tag
Confirm deletion of the virtual tag

Steps to use Virtual Tags

  1. Click on Menu

  2. Navigate to the Inform section on the sidebar and select "Cost"

  3. Click on Filters

Open Cost filters
Open Cost filters
  1. Scroll down to bottom of cost filters

  2. Click on Virtual Tags option and select required Virtual Tags

Select a virtual tag filter and apply it
Select a virtual tag filter and apply it
  1. Click on Apply.

Pages where Virtual Tags are available: Cost, AI Cost, Resources, Cost Variance, K8's Cost, Datacenter Cost, Coverage

Clone Virtual Tags

Clone an existing virtual tag to quickly create a new one with the same setup already in place.
This is useful when you need a similar view for another team, business unit, environment, or customer use case.
Instead of rebuilding filters and structure from scratch, you can start with a copied version and make only the needed changes.
The cloned virtual tag is independent, so updates to it do not affect the original.

  1. Click on Menu

  2. Navigate to the Admin section on the sidebar and select "Virtual Tags."

Open Virtual Tags from the Admin menu
Open Virtual Tags from the Admin menu
  1. Click on Clone icon (You can see same filtered options selected)

Clone a virtual tag with its existing filters
Clone a virtual tag with its existing filters
  1. Edit the required filters and create

  2. Click Next -> Create

FAQs

Does creating a Virtual Tag change the actual tags on my cloud resources?
No. Virtual Tags never modify anything in your cloud provider — they exist entirely within Mavvrik and are applied virtually, purely to support cost allocation, filtering, and reporting inside the platform.

Which pages can I actually use Virtual Tags on?
Cost, AI Cost, Resources, Cost Variance, K8s Cost, Datacenter Cost, and Coverage. If you've created a tag but don't see it as a filter option somewhere else, that page likely isn't one of these.