Monitor unused EC2 On-Demand Capacity Reservations using AWS Budget Alerts

Authored by Krina Patel, Siddarth Bommidika, Anupa Bhattacharyya, Vinod Jayendra, Abdul Majid Mohammed

Overview of ODCR Budget Alerts

To help customers monitor ODCR usage, AWS provides a powerful tool in the form of Budget Alerts. These Alerts can be set up to monitor the utilization of your ODCR instances, enabling you to stay on top of your spending and optimize your resource usage. By setting up ODCR Budget Alerts, you can:

1. Receive timely alerts when your ODCR usage deviates from your expected usage, allowing you to take immediate action.
2. Identify instances that are consistently underutilized, enabling you to adjust your reservations or consider alternative deployment strategies.
3. Collaborate more effectively with your internal teams by providing valuable insights into your ODCR usage patterns.

Steps for setting up Budget Alerts for Unused ODCR

You can create a cost budget and add an alert threshold for notifications by following the instructions provided -

1. Sign in to the AWS Management Console and navigate to the Billing and Cost Management. Select Budgets in the navigation pane.

2. Select Create budget at the top of the page

3. Under Budget setup, select Customize (advanced) and select Usage budget to monitor your costs against a specified amount.

4. Set your budget name and select the usage types starting with UnusedBox*.

5. Choose a period and select the budget renewal type. Also select the budgeting method and the amount based on requirement.

6. Select the budget scope and add tags optionally.

7. Add an alert threshold for notifications. Select whether to use an absolute value or percentage, and add the email ids to receive notifications if the threshold is met.

8. Click Next to review the budget setup and Click Create budget.

Output email received when the threshold is met.

Budget Overview Screen to review the usage alerts.