Allocation Thresholds

Allocation thresholds act on an allocation when its usage reaches a set percentage of its total. A threshold can notify the allocation's users, freeze new work, or shut down running resources. Your organization's thresholds apply to every allocation in the organization.

Budgets themselves are set on each allocation, under Monitor > Allocations. See Creating an allocation.

How thresholds work

Every few minutes, the platform compares each allocation's usage with your organization's thresholds. It uses the allocation's Used amount, or its Estimated amount for thresholds with Use realtime data turned on.

• Only the highest crossed threshold applies. For example, with a freeze at 90% and a notify-only threshold at 100%, an allocation at 105% notifies but is no longer frozen. Put freeze or shutdown on your highest threshold.
• Notify sends a cost alert to the members of the groups the allocation is shared with, or to every active user in the organization when the allocation is shared with the whole organization. Members of any groups chosen in Also notify get it too. Users see the alert in their notifications, and receive it by email unless they've turned email off for it. Each person gets it once per threshold level. Changing the allocation's total re-arms the alert.
• Freeze refuses new resources, starts, and moves onto the allocation. Resources that are already running keep running.
• Shutdown destroys every cluster and standalone instance in the resource groups that bill the allocation or any of its sub-allocations, and keeps doing so while the allocation stays over the threshold. Storage is never deleted.
• Thresholds compare against usage in the allocation's current period. Monthly periods re-arm the alerts each month. Allocations created before periods were available reset once a year on the Allocation Start Date, if it's set.

Some limits apply even without thresholds:

• An allocation with a total of 0 has no budget and blocks new work.
• An allocation that has used its whole budget, counting real-time estimates, blocks new work even without a freeze threshold. See Never above the budget.

Adding a threshold

From the Organizations list, select your organization. In the sidebar, under Billing, click Thresholds.

Click + Add.

Threshold settings

Threshold(%)

The percentage of an allocation's total that triggers the threshold. It must be at least 1, and values above 100 are allowed for allocations that overspend. For example, if an allocation's total is $5,000, an 85 threshold applies once its usage reaches $4,250. Each threshold in your organization needs a different percentage.

Use realtime data

Turn this on to compare the threshold with the allocation's Estimated amount, which includes real-time estimates for resources that are still running. When it's off, the threshold uses Used, the cost data confirmed by your cloud providers. It's off by default.

Actions

Select one or more actions:

• Notify: Sends a cost alert to the allocation's users.
• Freeze: Prevents new resources from starting. Resources already running keep running.
• Shutdown: Destroys clusters and standalone instances billed to the allocation. Storage is not deleted.

Because only the highest crossed threshold applies, add Notify to a Freeze or Shutdown threshold if you want users to be told when it acts.

Also notify

Appears when Notify is selected. Choose groups whose members should also get the alert, on top of the allocation's own users. Use it for people who track the budget but don't use the allocation, such as a finance group. Each person gets the alert once, even if they're in more than one of the chosen groups. It's optional.

Saving the threshold

Click Save at the top of the page. To leave without saving, click Cancel.

Your new threshold appears in the Thresholds list.

Editing a threshold

In the Thresholds list, click the edit icon on a threshold's row, or open its row menu and click Edit.

Change any of the threshold settings above, then click Save.

Deleting a threshold

Open the threshold's row menu and click Delete, then click Remove to confirm.