Azure Cost Management and Billing - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Azure Cost Management and Billing Setup

📖 Scenario: You are working as a cloud administrator for a small company. Your task is to set up Azure Cost Management and Billing configurations to monitor and control the company's cloud spending effectively.

🎯 Goal: Build a simple Azure Cost Management configuration that defines a billing scope, sets a budget, and creates an alert to notify when spending exceeds the budget.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a variable for the billing scope with the exact ID

Define a budget with a specific amount and time period

Set up an alert rule that triggers when the budget threshold is exceeded

Use Azure Resource Manager (ARM) template syntax for configuration

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Companies use Azure Cost Management to track and control their cloud spending, avoiding surprises in bills.

💼 Career

Cloud administrators and finance teams need to set budgets and alerts to manage costs effectively in Azure environments.

1

Define the billing scope variable

Create a variable called billingScope and set it to the exact string /subscriptions/12345678-1234-1234-1234-123456789abc representing the subscription ID for billing.

Azure

# Your code here

Need a hint?

The billing scope is the subscription ID string inside single quotes assigned to the variable billingScope.

2

Add a budget configuration

Add a budget resource named monthlyBudget with a amount of 500 and a timeGrain of Monthly under the billingScope. Use the ARM template resource syntax for budgets.

Azure

variables {
  billingScope = '/subscriptions/12345678-1234-1234-1234-123456789abc'
}
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use the resources block to define the budget with the exact name and properties.

3

Create an alert rule for budget threshold

Add an alert rule resource named budgetAlert that triggers when the budget reaches 80 percent of the monthlyBudget. Use the Microsoft.Insights/metricAlerts resource type and link it to the billingScope.

Azure

variables {
  billingScope = '/subscriptions/12345678-1234-1234-1234-123456789abc'
}

resources {
  name: 'monthlyBudget'
  type: 'Microsoft.Consumption/budgets'
  apiVersion: '2021-10-01'
  scope: billingScope
  properties: {
    category: 'Cost'
    amount: 500
    timeGrain: 'Monthly'
    timePeriod: {
      startDate: utcNow()
      endDate: dateTimeAdd(utcNow(), 'P1Y')
    }
  }
}
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Set the alert threshold to 80% of 500, which is 400, and link the alert to the billing scope.

4

Complete the ARM template with outputs

Add an outputs section that returns the billingScope and the budget amount from monthlyBudget.

Azure

variables {
  billingScope = '/subscriptions/12345678-1234-1234-1234-123456789abc'
}

resources {
  name: 'monthlyBudget'
  type: 'Microsoft.Consumption/budgets'
  apiVersion: '2021-10-01'
  scope: billingScope
  properties: {
    category: 'Cost'
    amount: 500
    timeGrain: 'Monthly'
    timePeriod: {
      startDate: utcNow()
      endDate: dateTimeAdd(utcNow(), 'P1Y')
    }
  }
}

resources {
  name: 'budgetAlert'
  type: 'Microsoft.Insights/metricAlerts'
  apiVersion: '2018-03-01'
  scope: billingScope
  properties: {
    description: 'Alert when budget reaches 80%'
    severity: 2
    enabled: true
    scopes: [billingScope]
    evaluationFrequency: 'PT1H'
    windowSize: 'PT1H'
    criteria: {
      allOf: [
        {
          criterionType: 'StaticThresholdCriterion'
          metricName: 'ActualCost'
          metricNamespace: 'Microsoft.Consumption'
          operator: 'GreaterThanOrEqual'
          threshold: 400
          timeAggregation: 'Total'
        }
      ]
    }
    autoMitigate: true
  }
}
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Outputs section returns the billing scope string and the budget amount integer.