I'm looking for advice on how to identify any unused resources like EC2 instances and S3 buckets in our pre-production environments. Are there any free tools available from AWS that can help with this, or any practical tips you've found useful in real-world situations? Thanks in advance!
5 Answers
Before you begin, it's important to define what 'unused' means for your situation. Are you looking for resources with no traffic, no logins, or something else? Determining this upfront will help narrow your search.
A great starting point is to check your AWS billing reports to see what's costing you the most. Focus on the high-cost items and collaborate with the relevant teams to make sure you're not removing anything critical. This way, you can eliminate unnecessary resources with everyone's support.
Are you working without any monitoring tools? That can make it tough. You really should consider implementing some form of monitoring to get clearer visibility on your resources.
AWS provides a lot of features for this purpose. Check out the Compute Optimizer, which can help assess and suggest which resources can be downsized or terminated. They also have an Efficiency Score in the Optimization Hub that could be really useful.
You might find this tool helpful: https://www.cloudquery.io/. It's designed to discover unused resources in the cloud, which could save you tons of time.
Another angle could be to let the team know about the costs first; it might prompt them to take action on their dormant resources before you even dive deep into the list.