Azure Cost Management | Budgets, Advisor & Tags

You will set a budget with alerts, tag resources for showback, and act on Azure Advisor recommendations. By the end you will catch overspend early and cut waste before the monthly bill arrives.

Learning Objectives

Create a budget with threshold alerts.
Tag resources to attribute cost by project.
Apply Advisor cost recommendations.
Time: ~2 hours · Difficulty: Beginner · Prereqs: an Azure subscription with some resources.

Architecture Overview

graph LR Res[Tagged resources] --> CA[Cost Analysis] CA --> B[Budget + alerts] Adv[Azure Advisor] -->|recommendations| Act[Right-size / shut down] Act --> Save[Lower spend]

Environment Setup

You will need: the Azure CLI and a subscription with billable resources.

Before you begin: agree a tagging convention (for example project, env).

Step-by-Step Execution

Tag resources for attribution

az resource tag --tags project=tyf env=lab --ids $(az resource list -g tyf-rg --query "[].id" -o tsv)

Create a budget with alerts

az consumption budget create --budget-name tyf-monthly --amount 50 --time-grain Monthly --category Cost

Review Advisor recommendations

$ az advisor recommendation list --category Cost -o table

Category Impact ShortDescription Cost High Right-size or shut down underutilized VM

Progress So Far

graph LR A[01 Tagging] -->|done| B[02 Budget] B -->|done| C[03 Advisor] style A fill:#1a4a1a,stroke:#00ff00,color:#fff style B fill:#1a4a1a,stroke:#00ff00,color:#fff style C fill:#1a4a1a,stroke:#00ff00,color:#fff

Testing & Validation

az consumption budget show --budget-name tyf-monthly --query amount && az resource list -g tyf-rg --query "[?tags.project=='tyf'] | length(@)"

You should see the budget amount and a count of tagged resources. With Advisor reviewed, cost governance is in place.

Troubleshooting

Budget alert not received: attach notification contacts/action groups to the budget.
Costs unattributed: enforce tags with Azure Policy so new resources inherit them.
Advisor empty: recommendations need usage history; check back after a day of activity.

Extension Ideas

Auto-shutdown dev VMs on a schedule to cut idle cost.
Export cost data and chart it in Azure Monitor workbooks.
Detect anomalies as part of CSPM.

Key Results

Set a monthly budget with threshold alerts.
Tagged resources to attribute 100% of project cost.
Surfaced Advisor recommendations to cut waste.
Established proactive spend governance before billing.

Azure Cost Management: Budgets, Tags, and Advisor