towardsthecloud / towardsthecloud/cloudburn

Add observability hygiene cost rules

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enhancement
Dominant language
TypeScript
Stars
1.8k
Forks
371
Avg merge
4h 32m
Merged PRs (30d)
63

Description

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

  1. CloudWatch alarm in INSUFFICIENT_DATA state for the full lookback window (metric gone/broken) — discovery; extends cloudwatch/ as CLDBRN-AWS-CLOUDWATCH-4.
  2. Synthetics canary with a 100% failure rate over the lookback window — discovery; research whether it lives in cloudwatch/ or a synthetics/ module.
  3. 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.

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start by reading the existing cloudwatch/ rules and their ID convention, then investigate whether Synthetics belongs there or in a new synthetics/ module. Review the proposed config/ module and settle the service short-name against existing conventions. Done means the three paying-for-nothing states are detected without recommending reduced monitoring coverage.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
aws, typescript
Domain
cloud, devops, observability
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Quiet
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
48/100

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