Quota limits are one of those hidden blockers that can catch digital native companies by surprise. You’re scaling fast, deploying more VMs or GPU nodes, and suddenly: “Quota exceeded.”
Since late 2024, Azure has offered Quota Alerts (Preview), a built-in way to monitor and get notified before you hit subscription limits. It’s not brand new, but many digital native companies still aren’t taking advantage of it.
Why this matters for startups & digital natives
- Avoid outages at scale: deployments won’t suddenly fail due to quota ceilings.
- Save engineering time: no need for custom monitoring pipelines.
- Simple setup: alerts in minutes directly from the portal.
- Fits existing workflows: integrates with Action Groups (email, Teams, PagerDuty).
How to create a quota alert in Azure (Preview)
1. Open Quotas in the Portal
Search Quotas in the Azure Portal and go to the blade.
2. Go to Alert rules (Preview)
Click Alert rules (Preview), then + Create Alert Rule (Preview).
3. Configure the Alert
On the Create usage alert rule page:
- Subscription → choose the subscription.
- Provider → e.g., Compute for vCPUs.
- Alert rule name → e.g., Quota Alert – EastUS vCPUs.
- Threshold → usage % (e.g., 80%).
- Severity → pick according to policy.
- Frequency of evaluation → e.g., 15 minutes.
- Resource group → select/create one.
- Managed Identity → click Create new.
- Notify me by → email, Action Group, Teams, etc.
- Dimensions → select Location and Quota (e.g., DSv5 Family vCPUs).
Save, and you’re done. You can find more detailed configuration options in the official Microsoft docs.
4. Assign Permissions to the Managed Identity
When the new Managed Identity is created (e.g., quota-alert-managed-identity), you must give it access to read quota usage.
- Go to Managed Identities in the portal.
- Select the identity created for the quota alert.
- Open Azure role assignments → + Add role assignment (Preview).
- Set:
- Scope: Subscription
- Subscription: the subscription where quotas are monitored
- Role: Reader (or any role that includes read access)
- Save.
5. Track & Act
- Your rules are visible under Quotas → Alert rules (Preview).
- Triggered alerts show up under Fired alerts (Preview).
Old vs New Reality
| Approach | Custom Scripts & Logs | Quota Alerts (Preview) |
|---|---|---|
| Effort to set up | High | Very low |
| Extra services needed | Log Analytics, Automation | None |
| Visibility | Manual dashboards | Native alert rules |
| Best fit | Ops-heavy teams | Startups, lean teams |
Takeaway
Quota alerts may have been around since late 2024, but they remain one of the most underrated features in Azure. For startups and digital native companies scaling quickly, they provide peace of mind with almost zero setup.
Don’t wait until your next deployment fails, set up a quota alert today (start with Regional vCPUs in your main region). It only takes a couple of minutes and could save your launch.
⚡️ Pro tip: You can reuse your Action Groups for quota alerts, keeping all notifications consistent with your existing monitoring strategy.
Microsoft
