resUU

resUU is an open standard and reference implementation for resource usage tracking and accounting across distributed systems. It provides a common data model, metric definitions, and APIs designed to enable cross-system measurement of usage, cost, and efficiency. The goal of resUU is to improve interoperability between cloud services, high-performance computing clusters, and edge deployments by normalizing how resources are quantified.

The project originated from the ResUU Alliance, a collaboration among universities, cloud providers, and research groups. The first specification was released in 2020, with major revisions in 2021 and 2023. It is maintained as an open standard with reference implementations in multiple programming languages and is accompanied by a reference schema and validation tools.

Architecture and features of resUU center on the concept of the Usage Unit (UU), a neutral measure that can be mapped to CPU time, memory, storage, network bandwidth, and energy consumption. The model defines resource types, units, timestamps, and attribution fields. Implementations offer software development kits, data collectors, and backends for time-series storage, along with privacy and governance controls and support for auditing and traceability.

Adoption and reception of resUU vary by sector. It is used by several research clusters and a growing number of cloud providers seeking interoperable metering and cost analytics. Critics point to integration overhead, potential performance impact, and governance complexity. The ecosystem remains active, with ongoing work on extensions for multi-tenant accounting, cost analytics, and privacy-preserving aggregation.