Chapter 11. CloudWatch: monitoring AWS resources for fun and profit
Partly because AWS resources can be so widely scattered across dozens of service categories and geographic regions, it’s easy to imagine yourself accidentally leaving things running and then forgetting about them. That thought turns a lot darker when you consider how many of those things are billed by the hour. And—in case you’ve forgotten—there are many hundreds of hours in a month.
You should also spend some quality time worrying about how much fun hackers could have if they gained access to your account without your knowledge. They could easily run up many thousands of dollars’ worth of usage costs before you noticed anything unusual.
Failing to keep track of your active resources can get expensive. What’s a poor admin to do? Fortunately, AWS provides effective tools to keep you in the loop. You just have to enable them.
Perhaps the quickest way to apply some kind of control to your account costs is through AWS Budgets. Clicking your account name at upper-right on any AWS page opens a drop-down menu that includes a My Billing Dashboard link. Click it, and then click the Budgets link on the left side of the Billing dashboard page.