Cost management and budgets in Azure - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Azure Cost Management and Budgets Setup

📖 Scenario: You are managing cloud expenses for a small company using Microsoft Azure. To keep costs under control, you want to create a budget that tracks spending and alerts you when costs approach a set limit.

🎯 Goal: Build an Azure budget configuration that monitors monthly spending for a subscription and sends an alert when spending reaches 80% of the budget.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a budget resource with a specific name and amount

Set the budget time period to monthly

Configure an alert threshold at 80% of the budget

Assign an email recipient for the alert notification

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Companies use budgets in Azure to avoid unexpected cloud costs by setting spending limits and alerts.

💼 Career

Cloud administrators and cost managers need to configure budgets to track and control cloud expenses.

1

Create the initial budget resource dictionary

Create a dictionary called budget with these exact keys and values: name set to "MonthlyBudget", amount set to 1000, and time_grain set to "Monthly".

Azure

# Create the budget dictionary with name, amount, and time_grain
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use a Python dictionary with keys exactly as name, amount, and time_grain.

2

Add alert threshold configuration

Add a key alerts to the budget dictionary. Set it to a list containing one dictionary with keys: threshold set to 80, operator set to "GreaterThanOrEqualTo", and contact_emails set to a list with one email string "[e-mail]".

Azure

budget = {
    "name": "MonthlyBudget",
    "amount": 1000,
    "time_grain": "Monthly"
}
# Add alerts configuration to budget
# Your code here

Need a hint?

The alerts key should be a list with one dictionary inside it.

3

Add subscription ID to the budget configuration

Add a key subscription_id to the budget dictionary and set it to the string "12345678-1234-1234-1234-123456789abc".

Azure

budget = {
    "name": "MonthlyBudget",
    "amount": 1000,
    "time_grain": "Monthly",
    "alerts": [
        {
            "threshold": 80,
            "operator": "GreaterThanOrEqualTo",
            "contact_emails": ["[e-mail]"]
        }
    ]
}
# Add subscription_id key to budget
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Put the subscription ID as a string under the key subscription_id.

4

Complete budget dictionary with category and time period

Add two keys to the budget dictionary: category set to "Cost" and time_period set to a dictionary with start_date as "2024-01-01" and end_date as "2024-12-31".

Azure

budget = {
    "name": "MonthlyBudget",
    "amount": 1000,
    "time_grain": "Monthly",
    "alerts": [
        {
            "threshold": 80,
            "operator": "GreaterThanOrEqualTo",
            "contact_emails": ["[e-mail]"]
        }
    ],
    "subscription_id": "12345678-1234-1234-1234-123456789abc"
}
# Add category and time_period keys to budget
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use a nested dictionary for time_period with the exact dates.