1The First Rule of AWS
The absolute first thing any developer should do upon opening a new AWS account is set an AWS Budget for $10. It takes 2 minutes and guarantees you won't wake up to a $50,000 bill because you accidentally exposed a key on GitHub.
2Step-by-Step Breakdown
The Cloud Billing Problem. Cloud resources are easy to spin up and easy to forget. Without monitoring, a forgotten database can cost thousands of dollars a month.
AWS Cost Explorer. A tool that enables you to view and analyze your costs and usage. You can visualize data over the last 12 months and forecast the next 12 months.
Cost Allocation Tags. To make Cost Explorer useful, you must Tag your resources. By assigning a 'Project=Alpha' tag, you can filter Cost Explorer to see exactly what Project Alpha costs.
Grouping and Filtering. You can group your bill by Service (EC2 vs S3), Region, or Tag to hunt down spending anomalies.
Knowledge Check. What is the best way to track how much a specific department (e.g., Marketing) is spending on AWS resources?
- →Use Cost Allocation Tags
- →Put them in a separate VPC
AWS Budgets. Cost Explorer looks at the past. Budgets look at the present and future. You can set custom budgets that alert you when costs exceed your threshold.
Budget Types. You can create Cost Budgets (money), Usage Budgets (e.g., max 1000 hours of EC2), and Reservation Budgets (tracking Reserved Instance usage).
Alerting. Budgets can send emails or SNS notifications when you hit 80%, 100%, or even when you are *forecasted* to hit 100% of your budget.
AWS Pricing Calculator. Before you build, use the Pricing Calculator to estimate the monthly cost of your proposed architecture.
Summary. Tag everything, explore costs visually, and set budgets immediately.
