Efficiently Monitor Costs in Azure

  • 3/7/2022
  • One-minute read
  • Azure Cost Management + Billing: Use the Cost analysis blade to segment spend by subscription, resource group, or tag. Schedule exports to storage for long-term trending.
  • Budgets & Alerts: Set monthly/quarterly budgets with percentage thresholds; route alerts to email, Teams, or ITSM tooling.
  • Cost Anomaly Detection: Enable anomaly alerts to flag spikes automatically.

Automation Options

  • Azure Cost Management API: Automate reporting and integrate with finance systems. Authenticate via Azure AD app registrations and query the UsageDetails endpoint.
  • Azure Advisor: Surface savings recommendations (reserved instances, idle resources) and export results for action tracking.

Third-Party Enhancements

Tools like CloudHealth, Apptio, or Amplitude Cloud FinOps can aggregate multi-cloud spend, allocate shared costs, and provide custom dashboards. Evaluate them if you manage large portfolios or need showback/chargeback.

Best Practices

  1. Tag resources with cost-centre and environment metadata; enforce tagging policies with Azure Policy.
  2. Review budgets weekly; adjust for seasonal workloads or forecast changes.
  3. Combine cost monitoring with automation (e.g., runbooks that shut down idle VMs) to capture quick wins.

References

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