AWS announces new budget actions

Nov. 9, 2020, 1:22 p.m.

TL;DR

With AWS introducing new budget actions, customers now have better control of the spending on their AWS account. AWS customers would now be able to define the action they wish to take if their budget exceeds the threshold.

Every budget threshold can accommodate up to 10 pre-set actions.

Key Facts

1
There are 3 new action types: Identity and Access Management (IAM) policy, Service Control policy (SCPs), and target running instances (EC2 or RDS).
2
You can either choose to execute your actions automatically or put in the requirement of a workflow approval process before AWS Budgets executes reports on your behalf.
3
The budget alert section has been renamed as budget threshold to demarcate between a budget notification and a budget action notification. It is mandatory to add a recipient for budget action notifications and you do not need one for budget notifications.
4
Every budget threshold can accommodate up to 10 pre-set actions.
5
Budget actions that apply IAM or SCP policies will be reset at the start of each budget period (e.g., October to November). Actions aimed at specific resources will not be affected by the change of the budget period.

Details

The AWS Budgets feature helps users better plan and control their expenses. The dashboard on AWS Budgets allows AWS users to create budgets, set thresholds, and configure related actions.

Amazon announced the introduction of new budget action in an official blog post.

Whenever a user account exceeds the set budget threshold, it can execute a defined action. AWS administrators can choose between a workflow approval process or an automated action. However, the authors of the AWS blog post recommend a workflow approval process until and unless you are absolutely sure that you do not require human intervention to execute an action. They have also written a detailed blog post about how to use the new AWS Budgets.

There is no doubt that AWS is competing with other major public cloud providers to help customers achieve saving potential and cost optimizations. They are constantly coming up with new measures to help their users optimize their expenditure. The latest AWS Budgets is another step in line with AWS cost optimization.

Announcing AWS Budgets Actions

AWS Budget Actions (launched last week) are really powerful. You can take action (change IAM or SCP policy, or stop an RDS or EC2 instance) when actual spending or forecast spending exceed the budget #aws

https://t.co/CK6lsiKSzr pic.twitter.com/xsI1aKWSc8
— Gareth Johnson (@Johnson82GJ) October 24, 2020