Tutorial / Cram Notes
AWS Trusted Advisor is an online tool that provides real-time guidance to help you provision your resources following AWS best practices. Trusted Advisor inspects your AWS environment and provides recommendations in five categories: cost optimization, performance, security, fault tolerance, and service limits.
Identifying Unused Resources with Trusted Advisor
- Underutilized EC2 Instances: Trusted Advisor checks for Amazon EC2 instances that have low utilization based on CPU and network usage. It provides recommendations to downsize or terminate instances, which could save costs.
- Idle Load Balancers: An application load balancer with no active back-end instances is considered idle. Trusted Advisor identifies these load balancers so you can remove them if they are not needed.
- Unattached Elastic IP Addresses: Since AWS charges for Elastic IP addresses that are allocated but not associated with a running instance, Trusted Advisor spots these IPs so you can release them.
- RDS Idle DB Instances: Similar to EC2, Trusted Advisor can identify RDS instances that are not being leveraged effectively, allowing you to stop or terminate them to reduce costs.
- Underutilized Amazon EBS Volumes: Trusted Advisor can find EBS volumes with low I/O activity over a specified period, suggesting potential cost-saving by deleting them if they are unnecessary.
To access Trusted Advisor checks, you can take the following steps:
AWS Management Console -> Services -> Management & Governance -> Trusted Advisor -> Cost Optimization
Here, you will find a dashboard with various checks and recommendations.
AWS Cost Explorer
AWS Cost Explorer is a tool that allows you to visualize, understand, and manage your AWS costs and usage over time. With AWS Cost Explorer, you can identify unused or idle resources by looking at your cost data in detail.
Using Cost Explorer to Identify Unused Resources
- Analyze Costs and Usage: By viewing the cost and usage data, you can spot trends that indicate underutilization. For instance, consistent low usage with a flat cost pattern could point to resources that are not being utilized effectively.
- Filtering and Grouping: Cost Explorer allows you to filter by service, tags, or other dimensions to hone in on specific resources. You can also group your costs by specific attributes such as instance type or region to quickly identify outliers.
- RI Utilization and Coverage Reports: For those using Reserved Instances (RIs), these reports help assess if your RIs are being fully utilized and whether you have too many or too few RIs based on your usage patterns.
To use AWS Cost Explorer, navigate to:
AWS Management Console -> Services -> Cost Management -> Cost Explorer
Example Analysis with Cost Explorer
For instance, after navigating to Cost Explorer, you might set a filter to see EC2 instances that have run for less than 10% of the month. This could reveal instances that are infrequently used and may be candidates for decommissioning.
Comparison
While both services can be used to identify unused resources, they do so in different ways:
- Trusted Advisor offers specific checks and actionable recommendations for resource optimization.
- Cost Explorer provides a detailed, customizable analysis of your costs which can help in identifying underutilized resources, but it doesn’t provide specific recommendations.
Both tools have their own merits and can be used in conjunction to provide comprehensive insight into resource utilization and potential savings.
Conclusion
Effectively managing unused and underutilized resources in AWS not only reduces costs but also tightens security by removing potential targets that adversaries could exploit. Regular use of AWS Trusted Advisor and AWS Cost Explorer is recommended for ongoing cost optimization and maintaining a secure cloud environment. By incorporating these tools into your routine, you could align your AWS usage more closely with the Security pillar of the AWS Well-Architected Framework, which is crucial for the AWS Certified Security – Specialty (SCS-C02) exam.
Practice Test with Explanation
True or False: AWS Trusted Advisor does not provide recommendations on how to optimize costs by identifying underutilized EC2 instances.
- A) True
- B) False
Answer: B) False
Explanation: AWS Trusted Advisor does provide recommendations regarding cost optimization. It can identify underutilized EC2 instances, which helps customers save money by downsizing or terminating resources that are not being fully utilized.
Which AWS service allows you to visualize your AWS spending and usage patterns over time?
- A) AWS Billing Dashboard
- B) AWS Trusted Advisor
- C) AWS Cost Explorer
- D) AWS Budgets
Answer: C) AWS Cost Explorer
Explanation: AWS Cost Explorer is a tool that allows you to view and analyze your costs and usage over time. It helps in identifying trends, pinpointing cost drivers, and detecting unused resources.
Which AWS service offers recommendations for improving security and performance in addition to cost optimization?
- A) AWS Budgets
- B) AWS Cost Explorer
- C) AWS Trusted Advisor
- D) AWS CloudTrail
Answer: C) AWS Trusted Advisor
Explanation: AWS Trusted Advisor provides recommendations across five categories: cost optimization, performance, security, fault tolerance, and service limits.
True or False: AWS Trusted Advisor can automatically apply its cost optimization recommendations without user intervention.
- A) True
- B) False
Answer: B) False
Explanation: AWS Trusted Advisor provides recommendations, but it does not automatically apply these recommendations. Users need to review and implement the suggested actions manually.
Which feature of AWS Trusted Advisor requires an AWS Business or Enterprise Support plan to access?
- A) Core checks and recommendations
- B) Service limits checks
- C) Full set of checks and recommendations
- D) Basic security checks
Answer: C) Full set of checks and recommendations
Explanation: The full set of AWS Trusted Advisor checks and recommendations requires an AWS Business or Enterprise Support plan. Core checks and basic security checks are available to all AWS customers.
True or False: AWS Cost Explorer can be used to forecast future AWS costs.
- A) True
- B) False
Answer: A) True
Explanation: AWS Cost Explorer includes a forecasting feature that enables you to predict your future costs based on historical usage patterns.
What is the primary purpose of AWS Budgets?
- A) Providing security assessments
- B) Sending alerts when spending exceeds predefined thresholds
- C) Visualizing infrastructure on a global map
- D) Managing user permissions
Answer: B) Sending alerts when spending exceeds predefined thresholds
Explanation: AWS Budgets is used to set custom budgets that alert you when your costs or usage exceed (or are forecasted to exceed) your budgeted amount.
Multiple Select: Which of the following AWS services and tools can help in identifying idle or underutilized RDS instances?
- A) AWS Trusted Advisor
- B) AWS Cost Explorer
- C) AWS Budgets
- D) AWS Systems Manager
Answer: A) AWS Trusted Advisor and B) AWS Cost Explorer
Explanation: AWS Trusted Advisor provides checks for idle DB instances, and AWS Cost Explorer allows you to analyze your RDS cost and usage data to identify underutilization.
True or False: AWS Trusted Advisor only provides recommendations for resources in the region where it is being accessed.
- A) True
- B) False
Answer: B) False
Explanation: AWS Trusted Advisor analyzes AWS resources globally and provides recommendations for all regions, not just the region from which it is accessed.
Which of the following is a benefit of using AWS Cost Explorer’s Reserved Instance (RI) Utilization report?
- A) It helps identify potential security breaches in your RIs.
- B) It determines if you have underused or idle EC2 instances.
- C) It provides recommendations for purchasing additional RIs.
- D) It shows you how much of your RI capacity is used and how much is unused.
Answer: D) It shows you how much of your RI capacity is used and how much is unused.
Explanation: The RI Utilization report in AWS Cost Explorer is designed to help you understand your Reserved Instance utilization and shows the percentage of purchased RI hours that are being used versus those that are not.
True or False: AWS CloudTrail can be used directly to identify unused resources and optimize costs.
- A) True
- B) False
Answer: B) False
Explanation: AWS CloudTrail is primarily used for governance, compliance, operational auditing, and risk auditing of your AWS account. It does not directly identify unused resources, though it can be used indirectly for cost optimization by tracking user activity and API usage.
Which AWS service enables you to manage and optimize costs across multiple AWS accounts?
- A) AWS Organizations
- B) AWS Cost Explorer
- C) AWS Trusted Advisor
- D) AWS Billing Dashboard
Answer: A) AWS Organizations
Explanation: AWS Organizations allows you to centrally manage and govern your environment as you grow and scale your workloads. It includes consolidated billing features which can streamline the management and optimization of costs across multiple AWS accounts.
Interview Questions
How does AWS Trusted Advisor help in identifying unused resources?
AWS Trusted Advisor analyzes your AWS environment and provides recommendations for saving costs, improving system performance, and closing security gaps. It specifically helps in identifying unused resources by providing an “Underutilized Amazon EC2 Instances” check, which lists EC2 instances with low utilization metrics over the past 14 days. It also offers checks for idle load balancers, underutilized Amazon EBS volumes, and RDS instances, among others.
Can AWS Cost Explorer be used to track unassociated Elastic IP addresses, and how would you go about doing that?
Yes, AWS Cost Explorer can be used to track unassociated Elastic IP addresses. You can use the “Elastic IP Addresses” filter under the “EC2: Instance” section to see the costs of Elastic IPs. Cost Explorer also provides the ability to view costs related to these addresses, which can help identify ones that may not be in use and causing unnecessary charges.
What features does AWS CloudWatch provide to alert you about unused or underutilized resources?
AWS CloudWatch allows you to create alarms based on metrics such as CPU utilization, network in/out, and disk read/write operations. By setting thresholds on these alarms for low activity levels, CloudWatch alerts you to unused or underutilized resources when their activity falls below defined thresholds.
Describe how the AWS Usage Report can be used to identify unused resources.
The AWS Usage Report provides details about the usage of AWS services and resources within your account. By reviewing usage patterns and resource consumption, you can spot inconsistencies or anomalies that indicate an unused or rarely used resource, such as EC2 instances or RDS databases with consistently low utilization metrics.
In the context of AWS, what is a zombie asset, and how can you identify it?
A zombie asset in AWS is an unused resource that continues to run and accrue costs without serving any purpose, like an EC2 instance that’s running but isn’t associated with any applications or services. These can be identified using tools such as AWS Trusted Advisor, Cost Explorer, or custom CloudWatch alarms.
What role does tagging play in managing and identifying unused AWS resources?
Tagging allows you to assign metadata to AWS resources, making them easier to identify, organize, and manage. By using a consistent set of tags, you can categorize resources by purpose, owner, or environment. This practice can help in quickly identifying unused resources that do not match the operational tagging patterns, or which lack specific operational tags, suggesting that they may not be actively used.
How does the AWS Cost and Usage Report help in optimizing resource utilization?
The AWS Cost and Usage Report is a detailed spreadsheet that shows your usage and costs across all AWS services. By analyzing this report, you can identify resources with consistent low usage or high costs relative to their business value. This insight can guide the decision-making process for rightsizing or decommissioning resources to optimize resource utilization.
Explain the process of setting up AWS Budgets to monitor unused resources.
AWS Budgets allows you to set custom budgets that track the cost and usage of AWS resources. To monitor unused resources, you can create budgets for specific resources, tags, or services, and set alert thresholds for low usage levels. When the actual or forecasted usage drops below these thresholds, AWS Budgets sends notifications, signaling potential unused resources that might need investigation or termination.
Is it possible to use AWS Systems Manager to identify unused resources? If so, how?
Yes, AWS Systems Manager provides visibility and control of your infrastructure on AWS. You can use Systems Manager Inventory to collect information about your instances and software. By analyzing inventory data, you can find inconsistencies, such as instances that do not comply with the desired state or instances without recent management activity, indicating that they might be unused.
How would you configure AWS Trusted Advisor alerts for underutilized Amazon Redshift clusters?
To configure Trusted Advisor alerts for underutilized Amazon Redshift clusters, you need to first ensure you have the necessary permissions to access Trusted Advisor and Amazon Redshift checks. Then, set up weekly email notification through the Trusted Advisor console for the “Low Utilization Amazon Redshift Clusters” check, which evaluates cluster usage patterns and suggests optimizations.
Identifying unused resources with AWS Trusted Advisor saved my company a lot on unnecessary expenses!
Thanks for the informative post. Learning more every day!
AWS Cost Explorer is another great tool to track and manage unused resources efficiently.
Is it possible to automate the identification of unused resources using AWS Lambda?
Excellent article. Quite helpful for exam preparation.
Using AWS Cost Explorer’s forecast feature is fantastic to predict future costs.
I think more examples would make the post even better.
With AWS Trusted Advisor, what specific checks are the most important for identifying resource waste?