Cloud Cost, Billing and Budget Management on AWS, Azure and GCP

No one likes an unexpected bill, especially from a cloud provider. And while moving to cloud saves many organizations money, it's important to monitor resource consumption and cloud expenses to:

• Gain visibility into your current cost trends and forecasts

• Drive clear accountability for costs across your organization

• Control your costs with strong financial governance policies and permissions

• Optimize your cloud costs and usage with intelligent recommendations

There are several tools to achieve this. Most major cloud providers offer their own cloud billing and resource management services. In this post we will look at the tools provided by the top three cloud providers: AWS, Azure and Google Cloud.

AWS:

AWS Cost Explorer: AWS Billing and Cost Management console includes the no-cost Cost Explorer tool for viewing your AWS cost data as a graph.

AWS Budgets: You can use AWS Budgets to track your AWS usage and costs. Budgets use the cost visualization provided by Cost Explorer to show you the status of your budgets.

Azure:

Cost Management via Azure Portal: You can view aggregated costs by organization to understand where costs occur over time and identify spending trends via the Azure Portal. You can view accumulated costs over time to estimate monthly, quarterly, or even yearly cost trends against a budget. A budget helps to provide adherence to financial constraints.

Azure Budget Alerts: When a budget threshold is met, email notifications are normally sent within an hour of the evaluation. Actual costs budget alerts are generated for the actual cost you've accrued in relation to the budget thresholds configured.

Google Cloud

GCP Billing Reports: Use the billing report to view and analyze your Google Cloud usage costs using many selectable settings and filters.

GCP Budgets and Alerts: A budget enables you to track your actual Google Cloud spend against your planned spend. After you've set a budget amount, you set budget alert threshold rules that are used to trigger email notifications.

While these are useful tools and reports, our customers often complain of being overwhelmed with too many reports and alerts. At Tryamb, we offer expert guidance on how to setup your billing reports and alerts for effective cost monitoring and management. We also offer help with reviewing these reports periodically leading to identifying hidden costs, billing errors and opportunities for price negotiations.

Reach out to us today to learn more: connect@tryamb.com