Cost Management in Azure

Thom Pantazi Feb 12, 2020

It’s important to effectively plan and control costs for your business. When using Azure products and services, you only pay for what you use. Cost management is key, and Azure Cost Management helps to provide access to usage costs and has the tools to manage them.

One of those tools is Budget Alerts. This easy to use tool allows you to set up alerts to trigger actions, like sending you an email or suspending an account. The video included in this post is a demo of how to use Budget Alerts. Here’s a quick run-down:

In the Azure Portal, select Cost Management.
Next, choose which subscription you want to manage, in my example I choose my Visual Studio.
Once opened, I can see my current costs displayed in a pie chart. In the Cost Management section on the left, we have options for cost analysis, budget and advisor recommendations.
Select budgets then click on Add to create a new budget. Next, fill out your budget details including a name, start and expiration date and reset period (monthly, for example).
Next, you add a budget amount threshold, in other words, the amount that you’d like to be reached and then alerted. When you scroll down, you’ll see how that amount fits in with your past and forecasted usage.
Once you click Next, the next screen is where you’ll set your alert conditions. Put in your percent of budget, in my case I put in 93%, so when I hit 93% of my budget an alert will go out.
I choose the Action Group, here I choose the Application Insights Smart Detection group, then put in the alert recipients’ email and hit Create.
You can see all budgets you created by clicking on budgets under that Cost Management menu on the left. When you open a budget, you’ll see your current spend and what money is left.

Using this simple tool within Azure Cost Management you can set up budgets for your subscriptions so you can be alerted before something goes wrong and you overspend. A great way to effectively plan and control your Azure costs.

If you’d like to learn more about Azure Cost Management or any Azure product or service, we can help. Our cloud and Azure experts are ready to help, no matter where you are on your cloud journey, from planning to implementation and anything in between. Contact us or click the link below to learn more about our cloud offerings.