Monitor costs using AWS tools
Overview
Cost visibility is a key factor in optimizing costs on AWS. AWS has a number of tools you can use to visualize costs and create alerts in reaction to those costs. These include tools, like AWS Budgets, that help you track and report your spending. This section covers specific ways to monitor your Windows on AWS spending, so you can track and react accordingly to your budget requirements. This includes adding necessary tags to your Windows EC2 resources. These tags enable you to properly monitor Windows EC2 and other Microsoft services by using AWS Budgets.
By monitoring spending and creating alerts with AWS tools, you can be more informed about current spending, projected spending, and spending anomalies. If you use Savings Plans
Cost optimization recommendations
We recommend that you take the following next steps to optimize your costs by using AWS Budgets, Cost Explorer, and anomaly detection:
Tag Windows EC2 resources
Set up alerts by using AWS Budgets
Enable Cost Anomaly Detection
Get a real-time spending analysis
View license-included spending for Windows by using Cost Explorer
Tag Windows EC2 resources
To effectively monitor your AWS spending, you must establish a tagging strategy for the workloads that you want to monitor. This is important so that you can categorically group resources and get notified on specific spending, as opposed to general usage spending. You can use tagging resources that not only help with cost but can also be used for other purposes such as Systems Manager automation. Additionally, we recommend that you implement some management for required tags.
To track your spending in Budgets, Cost Explorer, and Cost Anomaly detection, you must ensure that proper tags are in place. You can use tags to set up a specific budget for items matching those tags so that you are alerted when spending increases.
For example, you can use a simple tag like Key=OS Value=Windows. This puts all of your Windows instances together into one group that you can track spending for. You can also use tags for other items, such as Systems Manager. After you create a tag, you must activate the tag for cost tracking. Consider adding an AWS Config rule that monitors for tags that are attached to certain resources. AWS Config can alert you if there are resources running that don't contain the appropriate tags, which provide you with an accurate representation of your Windows EC2 spending.
After you have your tags in place, you can create a custom budget in AWS Billing. This provides visibility into your Windows EC2 spending. You can set a daily budget or a monthly budget.
Set up alerts using AWS Budgets
In this example scenario, you create a daily budget for Windows EC2. It's a recurring budget that uses the auto-adjusting option to track your spending and adjust the budget accordingly. If you have a static environment, you can use a fixed budget instead. Make sure to choose a baseline time-range (for example, 30 days).
Sign in to the AWS Management Console and open the AWS Cost Management console
. In the navigation pane, choose Budgets.
At the top of the page, choose Create budget.
Under Budget setup, choose Customize (advanced).
Under Budget types, choose Cost budget. Then, choose Next.
Under Details, for Budget name, enter the name of your budget. For example, Windows EC2 spend.
Under Set budget amount, for Period, choose Daily.
For Budget renewal type, choose Recurring budget for a budget that resets after the budget period.
For Start date, choose the start date or period to begin tracking against your budgeted amount.
For Budgeting method, choose Auto-adjusting (New).
For Baseline time range, choose Custom range, and then enter 30 days.
Choose Next.
In the Budget scope section, select Filter specific AWS cost dimensions. This is where tags are used to create the proper dimensions. Budgets doesn’t support Platform Type as an option in its filters. For this reason, you must apply OS tags.
Choose Add filter, and then select the Tag option from Dimensions.
Choose the OS tag, and then choose the Windows value for this to create a budget for the tag.
Choose Next.
On the Configure alerts page, choose Add an alert threshold. Here you set up two alerts: one for a 50 percent threshold and one for a 100 percent threshold. If the 50 percent threshold alert is breached before the halfway point in the month, it will provide a warning. That way, you can check if your spending is more than expected and react before reaching the end of the month.
For Threshold, enter 50 and select % of budgeted amount.
For Trigger, choose Actual.
For email recipients, enter an email address. Add another alert for a threshold of 100. Note: This example uses a simple email notification for the alert, but you can also use Amazon Chime or Slack.
Enable Cost Anomaly Detection
You can use your cost tags to set up spending alerts that are an anomaly. For example, you can use AWS Cost Anomaly detection (CAD)
To set up a monitor and alerts for the Key=OS and Value=Windows tag that you created previously, do the following:
Sign in to the AWS Management Console and open the AWS Cost Management console
. In the navigation pane, choose Cost Anomaly Detection.
Choose the Cost monitors tab, and then choose Create monitor.
In Step 1, choose the Cost Allocation Tag as your monitor type.
For Cost Allocation Tag key, choose Windows EC2 spend.
For Cost Allocation Tag value, choose Windows.
For Name your monitor, enter Windows EC2 spend.
Choose Next.
To create a subscription for the alerts, select Create a new subscription. If you have existing subscriptions, select Choose an existing subscription.
For Subscription name, enter Windows EC2 spend anomaly.
For Alerting frequency, choose Daily summaries.
For Alert recipients, enter your email address.
Choose Add threshold. For Threshold, enter 10 and then select percent above expected speed.
Choose Create monitor.
Get a real-time view into spending
An alert is a useful tool for monitoring your Windows EC2 spending, but you must use Cost Explorer if you want a real-time view into spending. Watch this video to learn how Cost Explorer enables you to analyze and reduce your EC2 costs. For more information, watch the AWS Supports You | Understanding and Reducing Your EC2 Costs
View license-included spending for Windows
You can view the EC2 Windows spending in your account by using Cost Explorer. To see license-included spending for Windows, you must set the following correct filters in Cost Explorer:
For Platform, choose Windows (Amazon VPC). For API operation, choose RunInstance:0002. This is the AWS Billing code for license-included Windows EC2 instances.
If you want to view your BYOL instance spending, change RunInstance:0002 to RunInstance:0800. This is the billing code for Windows EC2 BYOL.
With this visibility in Cost Explorer, you can quickly filter down your costs to exactly what you're spending on Windows EC2. If you want to dive even deeper into your AWS spending, you can use AWS Cost and Usage Reports (AWS CUR) to filter down to spending at the individual instance level. You can also generate reports that can be visualized in Amazon QuickSight and build customized dashboards.
For more information, watch the AWS Supports You - Visualizing Your Cost and Usage Reports video
Additional resources
Setting up required tags with AWS Config (AWS Config Developer Guide)
AWS Budgets Tutorial - Setup Alerts for AWS Billing | Amazon Web Services
(YouTube) AWS CUR QUERY LIBRARY
(AWS Well-Architected Labs)
