Identify and remediate underutilized or unused resources by using AWS services and tools (for example, Trusted Advisor, AWS Compute Optimizer, AWS Cost Explorer).

AWS Trusted Advisor is an application that draws upon best practices learned from AWS’s aggregated operational history. It acts as a personalized cloud consultant, analyzing your AWS environment and providing recommendations to save money, improve system performance and reliability, or help close security gaps.

For resource optimization, Trusted Advisor has specific checks in the “Cost Optimization” category:

• Low Utilization Amazon EC2 Instances: Trusted Advisor inspects your Amazon EC2 instances and finds those that have had a low CPU utilization over the past 14 days, suggesting that they might be oversized for their workload.
• Idle Load Balancers: This check finds Elastic Load Balancers that have low traffic and might not be necessary.
• Underutilized Amazon EBS Volumes: It identifies EBS volumes with low I/O activity, which could indicate they are too large or not necessary.

AWS Compute Optimizer for Compute Resources

AWS Compute Optimizer recommends optimal AWS compute resources for your workloads by analyzing the configuration and utilization metrics. It applies to EC2 instances, Auto Scaling groups, EBS volumes, and Lambda functions. Compute Optimizer provides findings and rationale for its recommendations along with projected cost savings.

Here are the typical types of recommendations Compute Optimizer can make:

• Instance Size: Suggesting a more suitable instance type that matches the actual usage patterns.
• Auto Scaling Groups: Recommending configurations for Auto Scaling groups that could help maintain performance while reducing costs.
• EBS Volumes: Offering insights into the performance characteristics of storage volumes and providing guidance on optimal volume types.

AWS Cost Explorer for Cost Management and Optimization

AWS Cost Explorer is a tool that allows you to visualize and manage your AWS costs and usage over time. With detailed cost and usage reports, you can identify trends, pinpoint cost drivers, and detect anomalies. Cost Explorer can help identify unused or underutilized resources by displaying patterns in spend across different services.

You can use AWS Cost Explorer to:

• Analyze Your Spending and Usage: Drill down into your costs to understand what services are costing you the most and whether the spend is necessary.
• Forecasting: AWS Cost Explorer provides cost forecasts based on historical usage, helping to predict future costs under current resource utilization patterns.
• Reservations Management: Manage your Reserved Instances and Savings Plans, and align your reservations with your usage patterns.

Remediation of Underutilized Resources

Once you have identified underutilized resources using the tools mentioned above, remediation involves a series of steps that might include:

• Right-Sizing: Adjusting instance sizes or storage volumes to better match the workload requirements based on the insights from Trusted Advisor or Compute Optimizer.
• Terminating Unnecessary Resources: Deleting unused EC2 instances, disassociating EIPs, or removing idle load balancers identified by Trusted Advisor.
• Improving Utilization: For resources that are seldom used but necessary, consider scheduling on/off times or auto-scaling policies when appropriate.
• Reservations and Savings Plans: If consistent workload patterns are detected, purchasing Reserved Instances or Savings Plans can reduce costs significantly compared to on-demand rates.

Conclusion

Optimizing cloud costs and efficiency is critical to a well-managed AWS environment. The combination of AWS Trusted Advisor, AWS Compute Optimizer, and AWS Cost Explorer provides a rich toolset for identifying and rectifying underutilized cloud resources. By regularly analyzing, right-sizing, and ensuring that all resources align with actual workload needs, organizations can reduce costs and operate more effectively in the cloud. Implementing a continuous optimization process is not just a one-time task; it’s an ongoing effort that is essential for cloud operational excellence.