What
Rules for observability spend that outlives its usefulness: alarms stuck in INSUFFICIENT_DATA, Synthetics canaries running against dead or perpetually failing targets, and AWS Config recording high-churn resource types.
Why
Observability costs grow monotonically by default. An alarm whose metric disappeared bills $0.10/mo forever while alerting on nothing; a canary hammering a decommissioned endpoint pays per run for no signal; Config recording ephemeral high-churn types (Spot/ASG-heavy accounts) generates configuration-item charges that quietly dominate the Config bill.
Details
- CloudWatch alarm in
INSUFFICIENT_DATA state for the full lookback window (metric gone/broken) — discovery; extends cloudwatch/ as CLDBRN-AWS-CLOUDWATCH-4.
- Synthetics canary with a 100% failure rate over the lookback window — discovery; research whether it lives in
cloudwatch/ or a synthetics/ module.
- AWS Config recorder with
AllSupported: true (or explicitly including high-churn ephemeral types) — discovery + IaC review; new config/ module — settle the service short-name (config vs configservice) against the ID convention during research.
- Framed as hygiene: flag paying-for-nothing states, never recommend reducing genuine monitoring coverage.
What
Rules for observability spend that outlives its usefulness: alarms stuck in INSUFFICIENT_DATA, Synthetics canaries running against dead or perpetually failing targets, and AWS Config recording high-churn resource types.
Why
Observability costs grow monotonically by default. An alarm whose metric disappeared bills $0.10/mo forever while alerting on nothing; a canary hammering a decommissioned endpoint pays per run for no signal; Config recording ephemeral high-churn types (Spot/ASG-heavy accounts) generates configuration-item charges that quietly dominate the Config bill.
Details
INSUFFICIENT_DATAstate for the full lookback window (metric gone/broken) — discovery; extendscloudwatch/asCLDBRN-AWS-CLOUDWATCH-4.cloudwatch/or asynthetics/module.AllSupported: true(or explicitly including high-churn ephemeral types) — discovery + IaC review; newconfig/module — settle the service short-name (configvsconfigservice) against the ID convention during research.