Configure a Microsoft Azure Cost (Percent) Alert

This procedure shows you how to configure an Azure Cost alert that identifies cost fluctuations between the average costs of two time periods.

Procedure

  1. Launch CloudCheckr and select a CSP or EA account from the Accounts List page.
  2. From the left navigation pane, choose Cost > Alerts > Manager.
  3. On the Alert Manager page, click + New Alert.

    The Create New Microsoft Azure Cost Alert dialog box opens.

  4. Select Microsoft Azure Costs (percent) from the drop-down list and type a name for your alert.
  5. Click Notifications and type the email address(es) where you want the notification to go.

    Click Configure Integrations to send notifications using a third-party tool such as Jira, PagerDuty, ServiceNow, Slack, SNS, or Syslog.

  6. Scroll down to the Alert me section.
  7. Configure your alerts using one of the following use cases as a guideline.

    Click a text box to see the instructions for a specific use case.

    In this use case, the average running costs for the previous 30-day billing period was $2,500. We want CloudCheckr to alert us when the daily running costs increases by $100 or more above $2,500 when a cost spike is present for at least two days.

    To configure an alert that matches these conditions:

    1. Select the first check box and type 100 in the (amount per day) text field. (Callout 1)
    2. Type 2 in the When the cost spikes for__days by text field. (Callout 2)
    3. Type 30 in the compared to the average cost of the previous__days text field. (Callout 3)

    In this use case, the average running costs for the previous 30-day billing period was $2,500. We want CloudCheckr to alert us when the daily running costs increases by $100 or by 4% or more above $2,500 when a cost spike is present for at least two days.

    To configure an alert that matches these conditions:

    1. Select the first check box and type 100 in the (amount per day) text field. (Callout 1)
    2. Type 2 in the When the cost spikes for__days by text field. (Callout 2)
    3. Type 30 in the compared to the average cost of the previous__days text field. (Callout 3)
    4. Select the second check box and type 4 in the (percent average text field. (Callout 4)

    In this use case, the average running costs for the previous 30-day billing period was $2,500. We want CloudCheckr to alert us when the daily running costs increases by 4% or more above $2,500 when a cost spike is present for at least two days.

    To configure an alert that matches these conditions:

    1. Type 2 in the When the cost spikes for__days by text field. (Callout 1)
    2. Type 30 in the compared to the average cost of the previous__days text field. (Callout 2)
    3. Select the second check box and type 4 in the (percent average text field. (Callout 3)

    In this use case, the average running costs for the previous 30-day billing period was $2,500. We want CloudCheckr to alert us when the daily running costs increases by $100 or by 4% or more above $2,500 when a cost spike is present for at least two days.

    However, we only want CloudCheckr to alert us when the change in cost goes above the percentage average by $75—this way, we won't receive unwanted notifications for every small incremental cost change.

    To configure an alert that matches these conditions:

    1. Type 2 in the When the cost spikes for__days by text field. (Callout 1)
    2. Type 30 in the compared to the average cost of the previous__days text field. (Callout 2)
    3. Select the second check box and type 4 in the (percent average text field. (Callout 3)
    4. Type 75 in the With a minimum cost change of $ text field. (Callout 4)
  8. In the Monitoring Costs section, select if you want to apply this cost fluctuation by subscription, service, or tag.
  9. Click Create Alert.

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