Cost model
Cost controls are part of the request contract and the deployment preflight. The simulation shows a requested monthly budget and alert thresholds; it does not query provider prices or create a bill.
Inputs and controls
| Input | Control |
|---|---|
| owner and cost centre | mandatory tags and chargeback dimension |
| environment and expiry | non-production lifetime and cleanup queue |
| cluster size | approved capacity tiers |
| monthly budget | provider budget with 80% warning and 100% breach alert |
| provider/mode | sandbox limits and enterprise account/subscription attribution |
| egress and storage | review of NAT, logs, backups, and retention assumptions |
AWS uses tags and AWS Budgets; Azure uses tags and Cost Management budgets. Actual estimates must be generated in the operator's approved account or subscription using current price data. No public document should present a price as a live quote or embed real billing identifiers.
Cost response
At warning, operations reviews idle capacity, expiry, log retention, and egress. At breach, new proposals pause for the affected scope and the owner is notified. An expired non-production environment enters the destroy review queue. Production budget exceptions require an auditable approver and an explicit time limit.