How to Script an Alert for Excessive AWS Usage

How to Script an Alert for Excessive AWS Usage

As data scientists and software engineers, managing costs is an important aspect of leveraging cloud services like Amazon Web Services (AWS). One efficient way to manage costs is by setting up alerts for when usage exceeds a certain threshold. This post will guide you on how to script an alert for excessive AWS usage.

What is AWS Budgets?

AWS Budgets is a feature that allows you to set custom cost and usage budgets to manage your AWS costs. You can set alerts that are triggered when your usage or costs exceed (or are forecasted to exceed) your budget threshold.

Step-by-step Guide to Set Up AWS Budgets Alerts

Step 1: Create a Budget

First, log into the AWS Management Console and navigate to “AWS Budgets” (under “Management & Governance”). Click on “Create budget”. Choose “Cost budget” and set your desired budget amount.

- **Budget Name**: Enter a unique name.
- **Budget period**: Select Monthly, Quarterly, or Annual.
- **Budget amount**: Enter your desired budget.

Step 2: Configure Alerts

In this step, you configure the alert conditions and contact details.

- **Set alert conditions**: Define when your alert should be triggered. You can set it to trigger when actual or forecasted costs exceed your budget.
- **Set alert contacts**: Specify the email addresses to receive the alerts.

Step 3: Review and Create Your Budget

Review your settings and click “Create” to set up your budget and alerts.

Scripting AWS Budgets Alerts using AWS CLI

While the AWS Management Console is intuitive, automating this process via scripting could be more efficient. Using the AWS CLI tool, you can script the creation of budgets and alerts.

First, you need to install and configure AWS CLI with your access key ID and secret access key.

- Install AWS CLI: `pip install awscli`
- Configure AWS CLI: `aws configure`

Then, use the create-budget command to create a budget. A JSON file is used to define the budget parameters.

aws budgets create-budget --account-id your-account-id --budget file://budget.json

The budget.json file might look something like this:

{
  "BudgetName": "MyBudget",
  "BudgetLimit": {
    "Amount": "100",
    "Unit": "USD"
  },
  "CostFilters": {
    "Service": ["Amazon S3"]
  },
  "CostTypes": {
    "IncludeTax": true,
    "IncludeSubscription": true
  },
  "TimeUnit": "MONTHLY",
  "BudgetType": "COST"
}

Finally, use the create-notification command to set up alerts.

aws budgets create-notification --account-id your-account-id --budget-name MyBudget --notification file://notification.json

The notification.json file might look something like this:

{
  "NotificationType": "ACTUAL",
  "ComparisonOperator": "GREATER_THAN",
  "Threshold": 100,
  "ThresholdType": "PERCENTAGE",
  "NotificationState": "ALARM",
  "SubscriberType": "EMAIL",
  "Subscribers": [
    {
      "Address": "your-email@example.com"
    }
  ]
}

Conclusion

Setting up alerts for excessive AWS usage is a practical way to manage your cloud costs. AWS Budgets offers an intuitive interface to configure these alerts, while AWS CLI provides a way to script this process for automation. Being proactive in cost management allows you to focus more on building and optimizing your data science or software engineering projects.

Note: Always ensure to update AWS CLI and SDKs to the latest versions to access the most recent features and security updates.

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