SCS-1: Creating a Billing Alert

In this post, we are going to see about the creation of a billing alert and enabling the alerts about free tier usage.

Services used:

Service Name	Scope	Description
AWS Billing	Global	the service used to manage the monthly billings
AWS CloudWatch	Regional	the service that provides monitoring for AWS resources and the customer applications running on the Amazon infrastructure
AWS SNS (Simple Notification Service)	Regional	the service that automates the process of sending the notifications to the subscribers attached to it

Step 1:

Go to AWS Console. In the search bar, type the word “billing“. From the filtered services, select the Billing service.

Step 2:

Under AWS Billing Dashboard, Select Billing Preferences under Preferences.

Step 3:

Select Receive Free Tier Usage Alerts, Receive Billing Alerts checkboxes, and enter the Email Address to which these alerts are to be shared. Click Save Preferences to save the updated preferences.

Step 4:

In the search bar, type the word “CloudWatch“. From the filtered services, select the CloudWatch service to open the CloudWatch console.

Step 5:

In the CloudWatch console, under the Alarms section, we won’t have the option to create any new billing alarms. The reason is that we are in the Ohio(us-east-2) region.

Note: The option to create a CloudWatch Billing alarm is only available in N.Virginia(us-east-1) region and not in any other regions.

Step 6:

Switch to the N.Virgjnia region from the Ohio region by selecting the same in the region dropdown on the top of the right side of the AWS Console. Now we will find the Billing option under Alarms.

Billing Alarm in N.Virginia region — Billing Alarm in the N.Virginia region

Step 7:

Click on the Billing option. The Billing Alarms dashboard will appear.

Step 8:

In the Billing Alarms dashboard, click on the Create Alarm button.

Step 9:

As the first step, we need to “Specify metric and conditions”. Click on the Select metric button.

In the Select metric window, Click on Billing under the Metrics section.

Under Billing, click on Total Estimated Charge.

Under Total Estimated Charge, select the USD Checkbox and click the Select metric button.

Under the Metric section, Change the Metric Name if required and leave the other options with the default values.

Under the Conditions section, define the threshold value (in my case, it’s 10 USD) and click Next.

Note: The AWS_BILLING_ALARM will be triggered when your AWS billing amount crosses this threshold limit, the AWS_BILLING_ALARM will be triggered.

Step 10:

As the next step, we need to “Configure actions“. We can configure multiple actions which are as follows:

Adding notification
Auto Scaling action
EC2 action
Systems Manager action

Out of these available steps, we are going to select Notification. Click on Add notification under the Notification section.

Under the Notification section, choose the below options.

Alarm state trigger – In alarm checkbox should be selected
Select an SNS topic – Create a new topic option should be selected
Create a new topic – The new unique topic name should be entered
Email endpoints that will receive the notification – The email address should be entered to receive the billing notifications

Then click on Create Topic. The respective topic will be created in Amazon SNS.

Then click on Next.

Step 11:

As the next step, we need to enter the name and description of the new alarm.

Enter the Alarm name and Alarm description as per the requirement. In my case, below are the values:

Alarm name – AWS_BILLING_ALARM
Alarm description – This alarm is for receiving notifications if the AWS Billing amount crosses the threshold limit

Then click Next.