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It is worth mentioning that the alert itself costs money. So if you're evaluating the alert every 5 minutes on the past 24h of data it can burn a small but surp

It is worth mentioning that the alert itself costs money. So if you're evaluating the alert every 5 minutes on the past 24h of data it can burn a small but surprising amount of money. From TFA it looks like that would be 10 cents per "time series". Or what I translate it to, is 10 cents every 5 minutes (*I think, but I havent used Azure in some time*). $1.20/hour, $28.80/day, almost $900/month. Not too hard to drop that by making the alert less frequent. (edit: I think I saw AU$ there, so maybe it is AU$900.)

manarth 5y ago
A time-series represents a "thing you're monitoring" – in this instance, it's aggregate egress, so $0.10 per month, regardless of the evaluation period. Monitoring CPU? Another $0.10 per month. Memory? Another $0.10. Thankfully, not $900.
- oneepic 5y ago
  I meant to emphasize frequency, not eval period. Apologies. That said I took a look at the pricing docs and didnt see frequency mentioned, so hopefully I am in the wrong about the price. As an aside, their (Azure's) pricing docs are written in the same fishy way their technical docs are written (my opinion only)...
  - giaour 5y ago
    The service being used here is Azure Monitor, which charges $0.10/month for each metric you monitor with alert rules: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/monitor/ https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/monitor/ They do charge by the MB for ingesting custom metric data, but storage outbound bandwidth is one of the free "standard metrics" built into the platform. So the alert's full cost is $0.10 per month. Since they charge by the "time series," I think that means the OP could configure different alerting thresholds on storage outbound bandwidth, and they'd still only be on the hook for $0.10/month.
mnahkies 5y ago
This is something to be mindful of when using datadog synthetics monitors as well - if you have a short interval, or many locations being tested from they can become expensive quickly
TriNetra 5y ago
Shameless plug: https://CloudAlarm.in https://CloudAlarm.in (in beta), sends you real alerts usually faster than azure with multiple reminders. It does this daily unless you tell it to shut up for the month for the given exceed. I call it real alerts because it doesn't wait for consumption threshold to reach the way Azure cost alerts do; as soon as it detects that your current cost * remaining days > the budget amount, it'll send you an alert [1]. The alert emails are way more meaningful (with projected amount in subject for example) unlike generic ones from Azure Alerts, so you see a real alert and prompted to take immediate action. 1: https://cloudalarm.in/Home/Docs/#how-is-budget-alarm-different https://cloudalarm.in/Home/Docs/#how-is-budget-alarm-differe...
- GordonS 5y ago
  But surely CloudAlarm relies on the same data as Azure's alerts do? Azure support told me that data is only updated daily. Also, Azure has an option to alert you beforehand if it looks like you'll go over; struggling to see how your service is any better.
  - TriNetra 5y ago
    AFAIK, Azure only alerts when a threshold you specify is reached. For instance, you set a budget of $10k and you specify 50% threshold. So when you have consumed $5k, Azure will send you an alert. However, suppose your daily run due to some bad selection is $400, in this case, Azure will tell you only on the 14th day that you've consumed 50%. On the other hand, CloudAlarm doesn't need threshold – it just takes your budget and see whether your daily burn rate estimates to exceed your budget. In the above example, CloudAlarm can thus notify you on the 2nd day itself because $400 * 30 is $12k. Yes, CloudAlarm, as of now, depends on Azure's pricing data API to do this calculation. It's easy for Azure to do what CA is doing but their threshold based design is a problem, which only prompted me to create this service. CA also has 'new resource' alarms as well, which are almost instant (a few mins after creation of a new resource), which helps you monitor and fix resource created with unexpected, expensive tiers. This can often happen with automated creation of databases, for example. I just did it because Azure wasn't doing it, despite people complaining, including me, had faced multiple such issues of unexpected expensive resource got created without intention/knowledge.

manarth 5y ago

A time-series represents a "thing you're monitoring" – in this instance, it's aggregate egress, so $0.10 per month, regardless of the evaluation period. Monitoring CPU? Another $0.10 per month. Memory? Another $0.10. Thankfully, not $900.

oneepic 5y ago
I meant to emphasize frequency, not eval period. Apologies. That said I took a look at the pricing docs and didnt see frequency mentioned, so hopefully I am in the wrong about the price. As an aside, their (Azure's) pricing docs are written in the same fishy way their technical docs are written (my opinion only)...
- giaour 5y ago
  The service being used here is Azure Monitor, which charges $0.10/month for each metric you monitor with alert rules: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/monitor/ https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/monitor/ They do charge by the MB for ingesting custom metric data, but storage outbound bandwidth is one of the free "standard metrics" built into the platform. So the alert's full cost is $0.10 per month. Since they charge by the "time series," I think that means the OP could configure different alerting thresholds on storage outbound bandwidth, and they'd still only be on the hook for $0.10/month.

mnahkies 5y ago

This is something to be mindful of when using datadog synthetics monitors as well - if you have a short interval, or many locations being tested from they can become expensive quickly

TriNetra 5y ago

Shameless plug: https://CloudAlarm.in https://CloudAlarm.in (in beta), sends you real alerts usually faster than azure with multiple reminders. It does this daily unless you tell it to shut up for the month for the given exceed. I call it real alerts because it doesn't wait for consumption threshold to reach the way Azure cost alerts do; as soon as it detects that your current cost * remaining days > the budget amount, it'll send you an alert [1]. The alert emails are way more meaningful (with projected amount in subject for example) unlike generic ones from Azure Alerts, so you see a real alert and prompted to take immediate action. 1: https://cloudalarm.in/Home/Docs/#how-is-budget-alarm-different https://cloudalarm.in/Home/Docs/#how-is-budget-alarm-differe...

GordonS 5y ago
But surely CloudAlarm relies on the same data as Azure's alerts do? Azure support told me that data is only updated daily. Also, Azure has an option to alert you beforehand if it looks like you'll go over; struggling to see how your service is any better.
- TriNetra 5y ago
  AFAIK, Azure only alerts when a threshold you specify is reached. For instance, you set a budget of $10k and you specify 50% threshold. So when you have consumed $5k, Azure will send you an alert. However, suppose your daily run due to some bad selection is $400, in this case, Azure will tell you only on the 14th day that you've consumed 50%. On the other hand, CloudAlarm doesn't need threshold – it just takes your budget and see whether your daily burn rate estimates to exceed your budget. In the above example, CloudAlarm can thus notify you on the 2nd day itself because $400 * 30 is $12k. Yes, CloudAlarm, as of now, depends on Azure's pricing data API to do this calculation. It's easy for Azure to do what CA is doing but their threshold based design is a problem, which only prompted me to create this service. CA also has 'new resource' alarms as well, which are almost instant (a few mins after creation of a new resource), which helps you monitor and fix resource created with unexpected, expensive tiers. This can often happen with automated creation of databases, for example. I just did it because Azure wasn't doing it, despite people complaining, including me, had faced multiple such issues of unexpected expensive resource got created without intention/knowledge.