You can monitor your account balance in your cloud account by generating alerts. This helps you determine whether to increase your account balance or continue with your purchased amount. The account balance is monitored vis-a-vis a defined usage limit (amount value).
You can configure rules to generate alerts when the account balance of metered services category reaches or exceeds the specified usage limit. If a soft limit is set, users are allowed to exceed the amount up to a system-defined value. If a hard limit is set, then a quota breach occurs when the specified limit is reached. When a quota breach occurs, you must increase your account balance to continue to use the services.
To create alert rules, do the following:
- Sign in to My Services.
- Select a service and click the service name to open the details page for the service.
The Overview page is in focus.
- Click the Billing Alerts tab. Alert rules, if any, are listed in the Alert Rules section. The Billing Alerts tab is displayed based on the account type and user role. You can set alerts only for services that support it and only if you’re a Cloud Account Administrator or a Service Administrator.
- In the Alert Rules section, click Create.
- In the Create Alert Rule dialog box, specify the following:
- Channel: Email. This is selected by default and is read-only.
- Service Category Name: Displays the selected metered services category that this service belongs to and is read-only.
- Limit Type: Specify one of the following:
-
Soft Limit: You’ll get an alert when the usage limit is reached, but you can still continue to use the resources.
-
Hard Limit: You’ll get an alert when the usage limit is reached and a quota breach occurs. You can’t create new instances as the service becomes suspended, however, you can still continue to use existing services or instances. You can specify only one hard limit alert rule for the purchased amount. If there’s an existing system-created hard limit alert rule for the purchased amount, then you can’t create another hard limit rule for the same amount. Also, you can’t delete system-created hard limits.
- Value Type: Select either Absolute or Percentage. You can’t specify Percentage for pay-as-you-go subscriptions.
- Usage Limit: Specify the usage limit. Limit value can’t be more than what is allowed by the system depending on whether it’s an absolute value or a percentage. You’ll get an alert when the resource usage reaches this value. The limit must be greater than or equal to 1. For Universal Credit subscriptions, the overage value is the cumulated amount of all services in the order from the date of purchase, and is displayed below this field.
- Click Done.
Example 6-1 Configuring an Alert Rule to Monitor Account Balance
If you specify the following criteria to monitor the account balance:
-
Your purchased amount =100 USD
-
Limit Type = Soft Limit
-
Usage Limit = 50 USD, limit value cannot exceed more than 2 times the purchased amount per system configuration
Then, an alert is generated when you have used 50 USD, but you are still allowed to create instances up to 200 USD (2 times the purchased amount), because you specified a soft limit. If you specify a hard limit of 200 USD, then a quota breach occurs and you aren’t allowed to create any more instances until you increase your account balance.
The alert rules are listed in the Alert Rules section in the Monitoring page. You can modify or delete alert rules here. To modify a rule, click Modify from the 
Action menu and make the necessary changes to the limits. When modifying an alert rule, you can’t change the limit types (either hard or soft) or the resource.
To delete a rule, click
Delete from the
Action menu. You can’t delete system-created alert rules.
Note:
You can modify or delete an alert rule only for resources that you have purchased.