If you talk to anyone who is just starting to learn Cloud Engineering, you will quickly find out that their biggest fear isn't failing to understand VPCs or IAM roles.
Their biggest fear is waking up to a $1,000 surprise bill because they left an EC2 instance running over the weekend.
Last week, we talked about how to prevent hackers from running up your bill by securing your credentials. Today, we are going to protect your wallet from your own mistakes.
I am going to show you exactly how to set up an AWS Budget that automatically emails you the second your monthly AWS spend crosses $5.00. Do this before you spin up another server.
Step 1: Open the AWS Billing Dashboard
Log in to your AWS Management Console. In the top right corner, click on your account name and select Billing and Cost Management from the dropdown menu.
Step 2: Create a New Budget
On the left-hand navigation pane, look under the "Budgets and Planning" section and click on Budgets. Then, click the bright orange Create budget button.
AWS gives you two options here: a simplified template or an advanced setup. We are going to use the custom route to ensure we get exactly what we want.
Select Customize (advanced).
Choose Cost budget as your budget type.
Click Next.
Step 3: Set Your $5 Threshold
Now we need to tell AWS how much we expect to spend.
Budget name: Give it a clear name, like
My-5-Dollar-Limit.Period: Monthly.
Budget effective dates: Recurring budget.
Budgeting method: Fixed.
Budget amount: Enter
5.00.
This tells AWS that your absolute ceiling for the month is 5 bucks.
Step 4: Configure the Alert (The Most Important Step)
Creating a budget is useless if AWS doesn't actually notify you when you cross it. We need to set an alert.
Scroll down and click Add an alert threshold.
Threshold: Enter
100% of actual amount. (This means AWS will trigger the alert the moment your bill hits $5.00).Notification preferences: Enter your primary email address in the "Email recipients" box.
Pro Tip: You can actually set multiple alerts! I like to set one at 50% ($2.50) and one at 100% ($5.00) just to have an early warning.
Step 5: Review and Create
Click Next through the remaining optional screens (you do not need to attach any specific Actions for this basic alert).
Review your settings on the final page, and hit Create budget.
The Takeaway
That's it! You now have a financial safety net.
If you ever accidentally leave a database running, or if you provision a resource that falls outside of the AWS Free Tier, you will get an email alert before the costs spiral out of control.
Building hands-on projects is the only way to master AWS, and you should not let the fear of a surprise bill hold you back. Now that your account is secure, get back to building!
If this tutorial gave you some peace of mind today, you can ☕ buy me a coffee here to support my work!
Top comments (0)