Smarter Week

How to automate it

How to automate “review cloud bills and chase owners of idle resources”

Here is the best way to spend less time on this, best first. Each comes with steps you can follow today.

90 min
typically, once a month
55%
of the time can be automated
Some setup
to set up

Fix 1 of 1

Software feature

Use cost tools, tags and budgets instead of reading the bill by hand

Cloud providers and cost tools flag idle resources, rightsizing and owners automatically, and budget alerts send problems to the owning team.

Typically saves about 50% of the time2 h to set up
  1. 1Enforce owner and team tags on resources (AWS tag policies, Azure Policy or GCP labels).
  2. 2Turn on AWS Cost Explorer and Compute Optimizer, Azure Advisor, or GCP Recommender; or use Vantage, CloudZero or Kubecost.
  3. 3Set budgets and anomaly alerts that notify the owning team directly.
  4. 4Review the top recommendations monthly instead of the full bill.

Tools: AWS Cost Explorer and Compute Optimizer · Azure Advisor · Google Cloud Recommender · Vantage · CloudZero · Kubecost

Who does this task

Roles in our library that list this as one of their common tasks. Each guide covers the rest of that role’s week.

DevOps / Site reliability engineer

HourLeak · the 8-minute work audit

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Other common tasks for DevOps / Site reliability engineers