Here's a structured summary of the key points from the tutorial on creating a billing alarm in AWS, particularly focusing on CloudWatch and billing data:
Overview
- Billing data for AWS is centralized in the US East (N. Virginia) us-east-1 region in CloudWatch.
- This data represents your global AWS costs, not just the costs incurred in the us-east-1 region.
- It encompasses the actual costs incurred across your AWS account(s), not limited to project-specific expenses.
Steps to Create a Billing Alarm
- Region Selection
- Ensure you are in the US East (N. Virginia) us-east-1 region to access and manage your billing alarms.
- Access CloudWatch Console
- Navigate to the CloudWatch console, select Alarms > Billing on the left-hand side to access billing alarms setup.
- Enable Billing Alerts
- Go to the Billing Dashboard.
- Select Billing Preferences on the left-hand side.
- Check the Receive Billing Alerts option to enable monitoring of usage charges and fees.
- Wait approximately 15 minutes for data collection to activate.
- Create the Alarm
- Return to CloudWatch and select Billing on the left side.
- Choose to create an alarm and select a metric related to your billing.
- Metrics can be filtered by service (e.g., Amazon EC2, Amazon S3) or viewed as total estimated charges.
- Define a condition for the alarm (e.g., when charges exceed $10 USD).
- Specify the action for the alarm, such as sending a notification through an SNS topic.
Key Points to Remember
- Metrics Selection: You can set alarms for overall account spend or drill down to specific services (e.g., S3, SNS).
- Activation Requirement: Billing metrics and alarms are only available after enabling billing alerts in the Billing Dashboard.
- Alarm Notification: Configure alarms to notify you via Amazon SNS (Simple Notification Service) when specified billing thresholds are met.
Example Use Case
- If your AWS account incurs a charge of $1.36, you might not need an immediate alert. However, setting an alarm for when your spending exceeds $10 ensures you are notified of unexpected increases in your AWS costs.
Conclusion
- Setting up billing alarms in AWS is a proactive measure to monitor and control your cloud costs. By following the steps outlined, you can ensure that you're alerted to any significant changes in your spending, allowing you to manage your AWS resources effectively.