Azure Databricks - Usage dashboard for showing the costs by person

Question

Hi all, I am using the USAGE DASHBOARD in Databricks in order to show the costs by person. We have Databricks on Azure.

I am using a report within the Usage Dashboard in which I can deep dive the costs by "RUN AS", I have a very high quote for "NULL". I see very low costs tied to the persons. Can you help me to understand?

Answer 1

Hi @Moira Fascioli ADM
Pritam Kabiraj explanation is on the right track "RUN AS: NULL" typically appears when Databricks jobs or cluster activities are initiated without a specific user context. This can happen in scenarios such as:"

• Jobs or pipelines triggered by service principals
• Scheduled or automated tasks (like those started via APIs or orchestration tools)
• Shared or legacy clusters where individual user attribution isn’t configured

This is likely why you’re seeing high costs under "NULL" and relatively low costs under named users — much of the compute usage may be driven by non-interactive, system-level processes.

To improve visibility and cost attribution, here are some steps you can take:

1. Review job configurations – Check whether jobs are running using a service principal or system identity, and whether Run As user is explicitly set.
2. Use tagging – Apply cluster and job-level tags (e.g., owner, department, team) to help attribute costs correctly.
3. Enforce cluster policies – You can use cluster policies to require tagging or assign default user context.
4. Audit shared cluster usage – Consider moving from shared interactive clusters to job clusters or single-user clusters to improve tracking.
5. Check audit or diagnostic logs – Azure Diagnostic Logs or Databricks audit logs can help trace the source of usage that's appearing as "NULL".

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I hope this information helps. Please do let us know if you have any further queries.

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