AWS Budget Alert

Introduction

AWS Free Tier is quite generous about various services. But once it expires expenses can go quite high pretty quickly. So for saving yourself from unexpected surprises and unknown expenses setting up a budget alert is a Must Do task.

Setting Up Via Console

Setting up a Budget Alert is quite simple. Search and select AWS Budgets from the search bar, select AWS Budgets then press Create a budget from AWS Budget dashboard.

Then follow these steps to create budget.

Step 1: Selecting Budget Type

First step is to select what type of budget you want to create. For getting reminder based on cost, need to select Cost Budget.

Step 2: Setting up Budget

Then need to enter all the details about budget. Following screen shot will create a recurring monthly budget of 10 USD named Monthly AWS Expense.

Step 3: Configuring Thresholds

Now have to configure when and how to get alert. Following screen shot will email at aws-budget-alert@example.com when 80% of Monthly Budget (i.e. 8 USD) is spent.

Step 4: Confirming Budget

Now review all information then Press Create to complete the settings.

Setting Up Via CLI

Now to configure budget alert from CLI, we need the account id. You can collect it from web or if CLI is configured correctly following query will return account details.

$ aws sts get-caller-identity 
{
    "UserId": "<UserId>",
    "Account": "<AccountId>",
    "Arn": "arn:aws:iam::<AccountID>:user/<UserName>"
}

with --query options we can filter only Account information. This will return Account Id with double quotes (“) around it. Striping that with tr and storing it in an environment variable.

$ AWS_ACCOUNT_ID=$(aws sts get-caller-identity --query Account | tr -d \")

Executing long commands is quite cumbersome but --generate-cli-skeleton can generate template JSON for input. Running this command will generate following output.

$ aws budgets create-budget --generate-cli-skeleton

{
    "AccountId": "",
    "Budget": {
        "BudgetName": "",
        "BudgetLimit": {
            "Amount": "",
            "Unit": ""
        },
        "PlannedBudgetLimits": {
            "KeyName": {
                "Amount": "",
                "Unit": ""
            }
        },
        "CostFilters": {
            "KeyName": [
                ""
            ]
        },
        "CostTypes": {
            "IncludeTax": true,
            "IncludeSubscription": true,
            "UseBlended": true,
            "IncludeRefund": true,
            "IncludeCredit": true,
            "IncludeUpfront": true,
            "IncludeRecurring": true,
            "IncludeOtherSubscription": true,
            "IncludeSupport": true,
            "IncludeDiscount": true,
            "UseAmortized": true
        },
        "TimeUnit": "DAILY",
        "TimePeriod": {
            "Start": "1970-01-01T00:00:00",
            "End": "1970-01-01T00:00:00"
        },
        "CalculatedSpend": {
            "ActualSpend": {
                "Amount": "",
                "Unit": ""
            },
            "ForecastedSpend": {
                "Amount": "",
                "Unit": ""
            }
        },
        "BudgetType": "USAGE",
        "LastUpdatedTime": "1970-01-01T00:00:00"
    },
    "NotificationsWithSubscribers": [
        {
            "Notification": {
                "NotificationType": "FORECASTED",
                "ComparisonOperator": "LESS_THAN",
                "Threshold": null,
                "ThresholdType": "ABSOLUTE_VALUE",
                "NotificationState": "ALARM"
            },
            "Subscribers": [
                {
                    "SubscriptionType": "SNS",
                    "Address": ""
                }
            ]
        }
    ]
}

From that JSON template I created budget.json and subscriber.json files with following data.

$ cat budget.json 
{
    "BudgetName": "AWS Monthly Expense",
    "BudgetLimit": {
        "Amount": "10",
        "Unit": "USD"
    },
    "TimeUnit": "MONTHLY",
    "BudgetType": "COST"
}

$ cat subscriber.json
[
    {
        "Notification": {
            "NotificationType": "ACTUAL",
            "ComparisonOperator": "GREATER_THAN",
            "Threshold": 80,
            "ThresholdType": "PERCENTAGE"
        },
        "Subscribers": [
            {
                "SubscriptionType": "EMAIL",
                "Address": "aws-budget-alert@example.com"
            }
        ]
    }
]

Now running following command will create a Budget Alert similar to the one create using console.

$ aws budgets create-budget \
     --account-id $AWS_ACCOUNT_ID \
     --budget file://budget.json \
     --notifications-with-subscribers file://subscriber.json

Resource

• AWS Budgets CLI Guide