Announcing AWS Budgets Actions

Starting today, you can define the action you want to take in your account when a budget exceeds its threshold (actual or forecasted amounts). This level of control will allow you to reduce unintentional overspending in your account. You can choose among three action types: Identity and Access Management (IAM) policy, Service Control policy (SCPs), or target running instances (EC2 or RDS). For example, you can choose to apply a custom “Deny EC2 Run Instances” IAM policy to a user, group, or role in your account once your monthly budget for EC2 has been exceeded. With the same budget threshold, you can configure a second action that targets specific EC2 instances within a particular region.

You can choose to execute actions automatically or require a workflow approval process before AWS Budgets execute a request on your behalf. You can set up to 5 budget thresholds with up to 10 actions for each threshold. IAM and SCP action types reset at the beginning of each budgeted period (e.g., monthly) while actions targeted at specific EC2 or RDS running instances will not reset. All AWS Budgets functionality can be accessed programmatically via the AWS Budgets API.

To learn more about AWS Budgets Actions, refer to the AWS Budgets webpage or the Configuring AWS Budgets controls section of the Managing Your Costs With Budgets user guide.