Azure Cost Guardian Toolkit
By Datanest Digital | Version 1.0.0 | $59
Overview
The Azure Cost Guardian Toolkit is a comprehensive, production-ready collection of scripts,
queries, policies, notebooks, and templates designed to give engineering and FinOps teams
complete visibility and control over Azure cloud spend.
Whether you are a platform engineer implementing cost guardrails, a FinOps practitioner
building chargeback models, or a team lead trying to eliminate waste, this toolkit provides
the building blocks to operationalize cloud cost management from day one.
What's Included
| Component | Description |
|---|---|
| Cost Management Queries | 50+ Python functions wrapping Azure Cost Management APIs for programmatic spend analysis |
| Budget Alert Policies | Ready-to-deploy budget alert configurations at subscription, resource group, and tag levels |
| Tagging Enforcement Policies | Azure Policy definitions to enforce consistent resource tagging across your organization |
| Cost Anomaly Detection Notebook | Databricks notebook for daily cost anomaly detection with configurable alerting thresholds |
| Reserved Instance Calculator | Databricks notebook for RI sizing analysis and break-even calculations |
| Idle Resource Detector | Script to find and report unused disks, unattached NICs, stopped VMs, and other waste |
| Storage Lifecycle Manager | Automated storage tier management (hot -> cool -> archive) based on access patterns |
| Advisor Automation | Script to fetch, filter, and act on Azure Advisor cost recommendations |
| Terraform Modules | Infrastructure-as-code for budget alerts, action groups, and cost management resources |
| FinOps Review Templates | Monthly executive review and chargeback/showback report templates |
| FinOps Playbook | Comprehensive guide covering crawl-walk-run FinOps adoption |
Prerequisites
- Python 3.9+
- Azure SDK for Python (
azure-mgmt-costmanagement,azure-mgmt-consumption,azure-identity) - Terraform 1.5+ (for infrastructure modules)
- Databricks Runtime 13.x+ (for notebooks)
- Azure subscription with Cost Management Reader (minimum) role
Quick Start
1. Install Dependencies
pip install azure-identity azure-mgmt-costmanagement azure-mgmt-consumption \
azure-mgmt-resource azure-mgmt-compute azure-mgmt-network azure-mgmt-storage \
azure-mgmt-advisor azure-mgmt-monitor pandas numpy scipy requests
2. Authenticate
from azure.identity import DefaultAzureCredential
credential = DefaultAzureCredential()
3. Run Your First Query
from queries.cost_management_queries import get_monthly_cost_by_service
results = get_monthly_cost_by_service(
credential=credential,
subscription_id="your-subscription-id",
months_back=3
)
4. Deploy Budget Alerts (Terraform)
cd terraform/cost-management
terraform init
terraform plan -var="subscription_id=your-sub-id" -var="monthly_budget=5000"
terraform apply
5. Detect Idle Resources
python scripts/idle_resource_detector.py \
--subscription-id your-sub-id \
--output-format json \
--output-path ./reports/idle_resources.json
Project Structure
08-azure-cost-guardian/
├── README.md
├── manifest.json
├── queries/
│ └── cost_management_queries.py # 50+ API query templates
├── policies/
│ ├── budget_alerts.json # Budget alert configurations
│ └── tagging_enforcement.json # Azure Policy for tagging
├── notebooks/
│ ├── cost_anomaly_detection.py # Daily anomaly detection
│ └── reserved_instance_calculator.py # RI sizing analysis
├── scripts/
│ ├── idle_resource_detector.py # Unused resource detection
│ ├── storage_lifecycle_manager.py # Storage tier management
│ └── advisor_automation.py # Advisor recommendations
├── templates/
│ ├── monthly_finops_review.md # Executive review template
│ └── chargeback_report.md # Chargeback/showback template
├── terraform/
│ └── cost-management/
│ ├── main.tf # Budget alerts & action groups
│ └── variables.tf # Terraform variables
└── guides/
└── finops_playbook.md # Comprehensive FinOps guide
Configuration
All scripts support configuration via environment variables:
| Variable | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|
AZURE_SUBSCRIPTION_ID |
Target Azure subscription | Required |
AZURE_TENANT_ID |
Azure AD tenant ID | From credential |
COST_ALERT_WEBHOOK_URL |
Webhook URL for cost alerts | None |
COST_ANOMALY_THRESHOLD |
Standard deviations for anomaly detection | 2.5 |
IDLE_RESOURCE_AGE_DAYS |
Days before a stopped resource is flagged idle | 7 |
Related Products
- Databricks Monitoring Suite — End-to-end monitoring for Databricks workloads
- Compliance Automation Suite — Automate SOC 2, GDPR, and regulatory compliance
- Azure DevOps Data Pipelines — CI/CD pipelines for data workloads on Azure DevOps
This is 1 of 20 resources in the Datanest Platform Pro toolkit. Get the complete [Azure Cost Guardian Toolkit] with all files, templates, and documentation for $59.
Or grab the entire Datanest Platform Pro bundle (20 products) for $199 — save 30%.
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