Cost-Center Label Required (Chargeback)

Every topic must carry metadata.labels.cost-center and metadata.labels.quota-tier in {bronze, silver, gold}.

“So far I don't see us adding cost here, but maybe I can look at limiting. We do could possibly use the limiting portals to manage how much data a client could consume instead of charging them back.”

Rationale

Chargeback without labels is folklore. A mandatory cost-center label makes FinOps joins (storage GB times $/GB by cost-center) deterministic, and a quota-tier label drives broker quota enforcement. Together these two labels turn Kafka storage from a cost black hole into an attributable line item.

Pattern

has(labels.cost-center) AND labels.quota-tier in ['bronze','silver','gold']

Examples

labels: { cost-center: cc-4421, quota-tier: silver, tenant-id: t-ab12cd }

labels: { tenant-id: t-ab12cd } (no cost-center)

labels: { cost-center: cc-4421, quota-tier: platinum } (tier not in allowlist)

Parameters

Name	Default	Description
`cost_center_label`	`"cost-center"`	Label key carrying the chargeback cost center.
`quota_tier_label`	`"quota-tier"`	Label key carrying the quota tier.
`allowed_tiers`	`["bronze","silver","gold"]`	Allowed values for the quota tier.

Implementation

Drop this YAML into Conduktor Console as a ResourcePolicy, then link it from an ApplicationInstance, Application, or KafkaCluster.

Conduktor ResourcePolicy

# Conduktor self-service ResourcePolicy
# Schema: https://docs.conduktor.io/platform/reference/resource-reference/self-service/#resourcepolicy
# Cost-center value is intentionally not regex-checked — any non-empty string is
# accepted so platform teams can plug in their own taxonomy.
---
apiVersion: self-serve/v1
kind: ResourcePolicy
metadata:
  name: tenant-cost-center-required
spec:
  targetKind: Topic
  description: Every topic must carry cost-center and quota-tier labels (chargeback / FinOps)
  rules:
    - condition: '"cost-center" in metadata.labels && size(metadata.labels["cost-center"]) > 0'
      errorMessage: "metadata.labels.cost-center is required for chargeback attribution"
    - condition: '"quota-tier" in metadata.labels && metadata.labels["quota-tier"] in ["bronze", "silver", "gold"]'
      errorMessage: "metadata.labels.quota-tier must be one of bronze, silver, gold"

Related policies

Try Conduktor Console

Enforce policies like this across your team — central audit history, pre-commit guardrails, ApplicationInstance bindings. 5-min Docker install.

Get Started →