Cloud cost, security and AI: real-world guides

Why a /health that returns 200 is not enough in serverless

Your health endpoint answers 200 while the queue grows, retries pile up and the dead-letter queue fills. We look at the failures a ping cannot see in serverless and what to do instead: a health contract per component, watching the cloud resources behind it, heartbeats for crons and end-to-end flows that name the broken step.

October 18, 20269 min

How to monitor an SQS → Lambda → DynamoDB pipeline without writing code

A queue, a function and a table can fail in five different ways, and some leave no trace in the metrics. We cover which signal gives each failure away, how to watch all three resources with AAA Sentinel without touching your code, and how a test flow with a traceId tells you the exact step where the chain breaks.

October 18, 202611 min

health+json, Spring Actuator and ASP.NET: one monitor that understands all three

Almost every service already has a health endpoint, but each ecosystem writes it its own way. We go through health+json, Spring Boot Actuator, ASP.NET Core Health Checks and the Kubernetes endpoints: what they return, how their statuses map, the configuration traps, and how the AAA Sentinel health contract reads them as they are.

October 18, 20269 min

FinOps

From the cloud bill to cost per order: cost-centre allocation and unit cost across AWS, Azure and Google Cloud

Knowing how much you spend in the cloud is not enough: the business asks what each order costs and which team spends it. Here is how AAA Sentinel allocates the bill by cost centre and works out unit cost, with a full example across three clouds.

Savings

Switch off dev and staging at night: how to schedule it with AAA Sentinel and what you really save

A development environment used only during working hours spends almost two thirds of the week running with nobody touching it. Here is how to find those machines, how to size the saving with honest numbers, and how to schedule stop and start with the Automations in AAA Sentinel's AI Agent.

FinOps

FinOps for startups: your first week with AAA Sentinel, from the first account to the Monday ritual

Nobody at a startup has time for a FinOps team, but everyone has time for a few habits that cost little while the bill is small. Here are the FinOps basics and how to set them up in one week with AAA Sentinel's 30-day trial: connecting the account read-only, the first scan, the findings, the savings overview and the weekly summary.

Detection

The cloud resources that waste the most money on AWS, Azure and Google Cloud, and how to find them with Active Findings

Unattached disks, unassociated IPs, idle load balancers, databases with no connections, oversized machines and orphan NATs. We show which AAA Sentinel rule detects each one on each cloud, which plan includes it and how to turn the findings list into savings, with a full example.

Optimization

Reserved Instances vs Savings Plans: how to decide what to reserve on AWS using real usage data

AWS Reserved Instances and Savings Plans cut your bill in exchange for a one- or three-year commitment. We explain how they differ and how to use AAA Sentinel to find which EC2 instances and RDS databases are worth reserving, with a full worked example and the maths done.

Multi-cloud

Multi-cloud cost management with AAA Sentinel: AWS, Azure and Google Cloud in a single view

When each cloud is watched in its own console, nobody knows the total spend or where the waste is. We show how to connect AWS, Azure and Google Cloud to AAA Sentinel, read unified spend, apply the same rules across all three and split cost by team, with a full worked example.

FinOps

Tagging on AWS, Azure and Google Cloud: how to find ownerless spend and fix it with AAA Sentinel

An untagged resource is a cost nobody can explain. We cover which tags to use on each cloud and how AAA Sentinel spots the missing ones, estimates unattributed spend and applies the tags for you once you approve, with a complete worked example.

Cloud cost alerts: how to set them up in AAA Sentinel so the bill holds no surprises

Finding out about a spending spike at month end is finding out too late. We show how to combine the native budgets of AWS, Azure and Google Cloud with AAA Sentinel alerts: channels, thresholds, periodic summary, anomalies and tickets, with a complete worked example.

Detection

Orphan snapshots: the hidden backup bill and how to clean it up with approval

Snapshots pile up without anyone looking, and many outlive the volume they came from. We show how AAA Sentinel detects them, how to propose deleting them with a playbook, and what happens at each step: approval, grace period, execution and savings verification.

The AI bill nobody reads: how to govern spend on OpenAI, Anthropic, Copilot and Cursor

Model APIs, Copilot and Cursor seats and every developer's own subscription add up to a second cloud bill that almost nobody reviews. Here is how to connect it to AAA Sentinel, what its AI rules detect, how it warns you before a limit runs out and what the agent can do for you.

October 10, 202611 min

DevOps

Infrastructure cost in the pull request: estimating a Terraform plan before the merge

The cost of an infrastructure change usually shows up on the bill a month later. Here is how AAA Sentinel comments on every pull request with how much a Terraform plan raises or lowers monthly spend, what leaves your machine, how to set it up in GitHub Actions and what it cannot price yet.