Set Up Cost Management, Budgets, and Alerts

Proactive cost governance ensures your data analysis remains economical, leveraging Azure’s built-in tools to forecast, alert, and optimize spend. From the portal, search “Cost Management + Billing,” select “Budgets,” and click “Create budget.” Name it “DataAnalysisMonthly,” set scope to your subscription, amount (e.g., $50 for free-tier extension), and period (monthly, starting today). Define thresholds at 50%, 75%, and 100% for email notifications—integrate action groups for SMS or Logic Apps automation, like pausing idle Spark pools on overrun. Under “Cost analysis,” view breakdowns by service (e.g., Synapse compute vs. storage), filtering by resource group for attribution; export to CSV for Power BI dashboards. Enable anomaly detection to flag unusual spikes, like query surges. Set reservations for predictable workloads (e.g., 1-year SQL pool commitment saves 30-72%). Review free-tier limits daily via the “Free services” page to avoid surprise charges post-30 days.

This holistic setup aligns spending with value, using tags for showback and Advisor recommendations for rightsizing vital as analytics scales, preventing credit exhaustion during intensive EDA.