Umbrella's Cloud Cost Management platform offers powerful alerting capabilities to help you stay on top of your cloud expenses. With our alert rules, you can receive notifications via email or Slack based on your predefined settings. This guide will walk you through setting up and managing alerts.

two main types of alert rules: Service-Cost Alert Rules and Commitment Expiration Alerts:

Cost Alert Rules: Cost Alert Rules monitor changes in your cloud costs at both the Linked Account/Project/Subscription level, service level and aggregated level.
Commitment Expiration Alerts: Commitment Expiration Alerts are supported AWS/Azure/GCP commitment. These alerts notify you before your Savings Plans (AWS/Azure), Reservations (AWS/Azure), CUD (GCP) are about to expire, giving you enough time to take necessary actions to renew or adjust your commitments.

Creating Service Cost Alert Rules

From the left menu, navigate to the Monitoring > Alerts page.
Click on the Service Cost Alert Rules tab

Click on Create Alert Rule from the right side of the page.
Define the Alert setting with the following information:
- Alert Type:
  - Trend Alerts: Compare cost changes over time to track spending patterns and identify optimization opportunities.
  - Threshold Alerts: Compare changes to a static cost amount to identify optimization opportunities.
- Cost: Select the design cost Unblended/Amortize/Net Amortize.
- Alert name
- Alert level:
  - Linked Account/Subscription/Project-Level Cost Alert: Receive alerts for changes in individual Linked account/Project/Subscription level costs.
  - Service-Level Cost Alert: Receive alerts for changes in individual service costs.
  - Total-Cost Alert: Receive alerts for changes in the aggregated costs of all services.
- Comparison Rules: Define the comparison criteria:
  - Today vs. Yesterday
  - This week vs. Last week: WTD comparison, starting from Monday.
  - This month vs. Last month: MTD comparison from the beginning of the month.
  - Day this week vs. Day last week: comparison between specific days. E.g. this Monday compared with last week's Monday.
- Criteria of Change: Specify whether the alert should trigger changes, increases, or decreases, and set the thresholds by percentage and/or cost.
- Recipient: Choose where to send the alert notifications; email or Slack channels.
- Filters: Customize the alert by including or excluding parameters such as service, tags, business mapping, charge type, etc.

Click on Create.

Creating Commitment Expiration Alert Rules

From the left menu, navigate to the Monitoring > Alerts page.
Click on the Commitment Expiration Alert Rules tab

Choose if to create an alert for Savings plans or reservations and click on Create Alert rule.
Choose how many days before the commitment expires you want to be notified, and choose the relevant recipient - can be an email or a Slack channel.
Click on Create.

⚠️ Heads-up for Azure accounts:

To enable commitment alerts, make sure Umbrella has the required permissions to access your commitment data. Follow the steps below:

Provide Permissions for your Reservations

Provide Permissions for all of your reservations

Log in to your Azure portal.
Navigate to the Cost Management page.
From the left menu, under Optimization, click on Reservations + Hybrid Benefit.
Click on a Role Assignment. Note: In case your Azure account type is EA, make sure you change the scope to "Tenant Root Group". Otherwise, you will have to provide a role per reservation. See guidance below.
Click +Add > Add role assignment.
Under the Role tab, search and choose the "Reservation Reader" role.
Under the Members tab, click on Select members, and choose the application you connected to Umbrella (you can verify the application at Umbrella platform under the Accounts > App Registration page).

This will grant access to all Reserved Instances within the billing scope. Once the daily invoice is automatically processed, you’ll be able to view the reservation utilization in Umbrella.

Provide permissions per Reservation

Log in to your Azure portal.
Navigate to the Cost Management page.
From the left menu, under Optimization, click on Reservations + Hybrid Benefit.
** Click on a specific Reservation** and from the left menu, click on Access Control (IAM).
Click +Add > Add role assignment.
Under the Role tab, search and choose the "Reservation Reader" role.
Under the Members tab, click on Select members, and choose the application you connected to Umbrella (you can verify the application at the Umbrella platform under the Accounts > App Registration page).
Repeat steps 3-7 for each reservation.

Provide Permissions for your Saving Plans

**Provide Permissions for all of your Saving Plans**

Log in to your Azure portal.
Navigate to the Cost Management page.
From the left menu, under Optimization, click on Savings Plans.
Click on a Role Assignment. Note: In case your Azure account type is EA, make sure you change the scope to "Tenant Root Group". Otherwise, you will have to provide a role per saving plan. See guidance below.
Click +Add > Add role assignment.
Under the Role tab, search and choose the "Savings plan Reader" role.
Under the Members tab, click on Select members, and choose the application you connected to Umbrella (you can verify the application at Umbrella platform under the Accounts > App Registration page).

This will grant access to all Saving Plans within the billing scope. Once the daily invoice is automatically processed, you’ll be able to view the reservation utilization in Umbrella.

Provide permissions per Saving Plan

Log in to your Azure portal.
Navigate to the Cost Management page.
From the left menu, under Optimization, click on Savings Plans.
** Click on a specific Saving Plan** and from the left menu, click on Saving Plan order ID.
From the left menu, click on Access Control (IAM).
Click +Add > Add role assignment.
Under the Role tab, search and choose the Savings Plans Reader" role.
Under the Members tab, click on Select members, and choose the application you connected to Umbrella (you can verify the application at the Umbrella platform under the Accounts > App Registration page).
Repeat steps 3-7 for each reservation.

Need Help?

If you need further assistance or have any questions, please reach out to our support team at [email protected].