Billing Alarm

01 Sign in to the AWS Management Console.

02 Navigate to SNS dashboard at https://console.aws.amazon.com/sns/v2/.

03 In the left navigation panel, select Topics and click the Create new topic button.

04 In the Create new topic dialog box, enter a name and a display name (optional) for the topic and click Create Topic.

05 Select the newly created SNS topic by clicking on its ARN name:

06 Under Subscription section, click Create Subscription.

07 Select Email as subscription protocol from the Protocol dropdown list.

08 Enter the email address where to receive the billing alarm notifications and click Create Subscription.

09 Use your email client application and open the message from AWS Notifications, then click on the appropriate link to confirm your subscription.

01 Run create-topic command (OSX/Linux/UNIX) to create a new SNS topic for sending notifications:

aws sns create-topic
		--name MySNSTopic

02 The command output should return the new SNS topic ARN (Amazon Resource Name):

{
    "TopicArn": "arn:aws:sns:us-east-1:123456789012:MySNSTopic"
}

03 Run subscribe command (OSX/Linux/UNIX) to send the subscription confirmation message to the notification-endpoint (in this case email):

aws sns subscribe
		--topic-arn arn:aws:sns:us-east-1:123456789012:MySNSTopic
		--protocol email
		--notification-endpoint admin@domain.com

04 Run confirm-subscription command (OSX/Linux/UNIX) to confirm the subscription by validating the token sent to the notification endpoint selected (the command does not return an output):

aws sns confirm-subscription
		--topic-arn arn:aws:sns:us-east-1:123456789012:MySNSTopic
		--token 4535392f37fb687f5d51e6e241d7700ae02f7124d8268910b858cb4db727ceeb2474bb937929d3bdd7ce5d0cce19325d036bc858d3c217426bcafa9c501a2cace93b83f1dd3797627467553dc438a8c974119496fc3eff026eaa5d14472ded6f9a5c43aec62d83ef5f49109da717322

01 Sign in to the AWS Management Console.

02 Navigate to Cloudwatch dashboard at https://console.aws.amazon.com/cloudwatch/.

03 In the left navigation panel, select Alarms then click the Create Alarm button from the dashboard top menu to initiate the alarm setup.

04 In the Create Alarm dialog box, under Billing Metrics, click By Service link.

05 On the Select Metric page, under Billing > By Service section, select an AWS service that you want to monitor for estimated charges (e.g. AmazonEC2) and click Next.

06 On the Define Alarm page, provide the following information:

1. In the Alarm Threshold section, enter a unique name and a short description for the billing alarm using the Name and Description fields.
2. In the Whenever charges for section, select >= (greater than or equal to) from the is dropdown list and in the USD $ box enter the threshold limit value in USD that will trigger the alarm and send an email when this is exceeded.
3. In the Actions section, click the + Notification button, select State is ALARM from the Whenever this alarm dropdown menu and choose the AWS SNS topic name created at Step 2 from the Send notification to dropdown list.

07 Click Create Alarm to finish the billing alarm setup. Once created, the billing alarm will be available on the CloudWatch Alarms page.

01 Run put-metric-alarm command (OSX/Linux/UNIX) to create the required CloudWatch billing alarm using the AWS SNS topic ARN as command parameter (if successful, the command does not return an output):

aws cloudwatch put-metric-alarm
		--region us-east-1
		--alarm-name BillingAlarm
		--alarm-description "Billing Alarm for EC2 Monthly Estimated Charges"
		--metric-name EstimatedCharges
		--namespace AWS/Billing
		--statistic Maximum
		--comparison-operator GreaterThanOrEqualToThreshold
		--evaluation-periods 1
		--dimensions Name=Currency,Value=USD
		--period 21600
		--threshold 120
		--actions-enabled
		--alarm-actions arn:aws:sns:us-east-1:123456789012:MySNSTopic