Can you set up Azure billing alerts?

Question

Is it possible to set up alerts so that you are notified by email if your usage goes above a certain threshold?

Answer 1

Hi,

Currently it is not possible. I guess your only option right now is to go and check the MOCP site for the usage and act accordingly.

Hope this helps.

Thanks

Gaurav Mantri

Cerebrata Software

http://www.cerebrata.com

Answer 2

Hi,

Nothing you suggest yet, but MOCP does send billing information monthly.

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Regards, Patriek

Answer 3

If you're using a promotional subscription that provides a level of "free" access, you're reported to recieve a notification email when you have used 75% of your benefits. However, I can't confirm this first hand.

Answer 4

With Windows Azure, there's not much you can do except periodic examination of your online bill (which is approx. 4 hours behind realtime). You could, in theory, sift through your trace logs, performing rough calculations based on when instances start and stop. You'll need to account for the 1-hour measurement increment, as well as bandwidth consumed (and you could look at IIS/ASP.NET counters for that). Even doing all this will only yield an approximation, nothing exact.

With SQL Azure, at least you could write a worker role process to periodically check capacity and report when you're within a certain percentage of consumed space. For instance, this example is from the SQL Azure Dynamic Management Views MSDN page:

SELECT SUM(reserved_page_count)*8.0/1024
FROM sys.dm_db_partition_stats;

You could then send yourself email alerts, or even adjust your database edition and maxsize up/down as needed. For instance, here's an example of changing a Web edition database max size from 1GB to 5GB:

ALTER DATABASE mydb MODIFY (EDITION='WEB', MAXSIZE=5GB)

I realize this doesn't solve your problem regarding overal monthly cost, or anything related to roles and instances, but at least it's one piece of Azure that can be programmatically measured and managed.

Answer 5

If you're using a promotional subscription that provides a level of "free" access, you're reported to recieve a notification email when you have used 75% of your benefits. However, I can't confirm this first hand.

Yes, it’s true. You can link a credit card or a purchase order to your subscription. But this is where charges will go if you exceed your benefits. Fortunately, the Azure Platform is supposed to send us a notification via email once we hit 75% of our benefit limits. Once your payment method of choice is specified, you will have to agree to another Terms of Service type page and provide some contact info.

More information you may find out from follow:

http://bstineman.spaces.live.com/Blog/cns!61AEA8168D26EA6B!1150.entry?sa=42511602

Hope it can help you J

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Peace Through Tyranny