Automate quota management

Effectively managing service quotas is critical for ensuring that applications remain reliable and performant. By implementing automated quota management, you can proactively monitor for threshold approaches and request increases in service limits before reaching them, thereby preventing potential disruptions in service.

Best Practices

Automate Service Quota Management

• Implement monitoring tools using AWS CloudWatch to track service quotas and resource utilization. This helps you proactively identify when you are nearing service limits.
• Utilize AWS Service Quotas APIs to automate the submission of quota increase requests when approaching thresholds. This reduces downtime and ensures that scaling activities are seamless.
• Set up alerts and notifications through Amazon SNS to notify the team when thresholds are exceeded or approaching limits. This helps in maintaining awareness and allows for immediate action.
• Integrate quota management with your CI/CD pipelines to automatically check and request necessary quotas before deploying new features that might increase resource demand. This ensures that deployments do not fail due to quota issues.
• Regularly review and adjust service quotas based on your workload’s changing requirements. This is crucial as it keeps resource limits aligned with actual utilization, allowing for better resource management.

Questions to ask your team

• What tools do you have in place to monitor your service quotas?
• How often do you review your current service limits in relation to your workload needs?
• Do you have automated alerts configured for when you are approaching your service quotas?
• Have you established processes for requesting quota increases when necessary?
• Are there any specific thresholds that trigger a quota management workflow?
• How do you ensure that your applications can dynamically adjust to changing resource availability?

Who should be doing this?

Cloud Architect

• Design the architecture to handle service quotas effectively.
• Implement monitoring tools to track service usage against quotas.
• Set up alerts for when thresholds are approached.
• Ensure the architecture can scale according to quota limits.

DevOps Engineer

• Automate the management of service quotas using AWS Service Quotas APIs.
• Create scripts for automatic quota increase requests when necessary.
• Maintain and update automation tools to ensure they function correctly.
• Collaborate with the Cloud Architect to integrate monitoring tools into the deployment pipeline.

AWS Administrator

• Monitor service limits and identify potential issues.
• Respond to alert notifications regarding quotas and constraints.
• Perform manual quota increase requests if automation fails.
• Document service quota limits and changes for compliance and auditing purposes.

Product Owner

• Ensure that reliability objectives concerning service quotas align with business goals.
• Communicate with stakeholders about the impact of service limits on product performance.
• Prioritize workload requirements according to resource constraints and reliability needs.

What evidence shows this is happening in your organization?

• Service Quota Alert Configuration Template: A CloudFormation template to set up Amazon CloudWatch alarms that notify administrators when service quotas are nearing their limits.
• Automated Quota Management Runbook: A detailed runbook that outlines the steps to automatically request quota increases using AWS Service Quotas APIs, including code snippets and example scripts.
• Service Limits Dashboard: A custom AWS CloudWatch dashboard that visualizes service quota usage and alerts for various AWS services, enabling teams to monitor their limits in real-time.
• Service Quota Management Policy: A policy document that defines the processes and responsibilities for monitoring service quotas, including alerting procedures and escalation paths.
• Quota Management Checklist: A checklist to assess the current quota management practices in the organization, ensuring all necessary alerts and automation are in place.

Cloud Services

AWS

• AWS Service Quotas: Service Quotas helps you manage and monitor your AWS service limits, providing a way to view quotas and set alarms on threshold approaches.
• Amazon CloudWatch: CloudWatch allows you to monitor AWS resources and applications in real time, enabling you to set alarms based on specific metrics related to service limits.
• AWS Lambda: Use Lambda to automate the process of sending quota increase requests by creating functions that trigger based on CloudWatch alarms.

Azure

• Azure Resource Manager: Resource Manager allows you to manage and monitor resource quotas within your Azure subscriptions, and provides APIs to handle quota requests.
• Azure Monitor: Azure Monitor collects and analyzes telemetry data, providing alerting options when approaching resource limits.

Google Cloud Platform

• Google Cloud Monitoring: Cloud Monitoring provides visibility into the performance and availability of your cloud resources, with capabilities to alert you when nearing service limits.
• Google Cloud Functions: Use Cloud Functions to automate responses to quota alerts or to handle quota increase requests based on monitoring data.