AWS Resource Cleanup Audit

I’ll help you conduct a comprehensive AWS resource audit to identify unused resources and estimate potential savings.

Step 1: Start with High-Impact, Low-Risk Resources

Let’s begin with the easiest wins - resources that are clearly unused and safe to delete:

1. Unattached EBS Volumes 🟢 SAFE

What to look for: Volumes with state “available” (not attached to any EC2 instance)

Discovery Command:

# Find all unattached EBS volumes
aws ec2 describe-volumes \
  --filters Name=status,Values=available \
  --query 'Volumes[*].{ID:VolumeId,Size:Size,Type:VolumeType,Created:CreateTime,AZ:AvailabilityZone}' \
  --output table

Calculate potential savings:

# Get total unattached GB
aws ec2 describe-volumes \
  --filters Name=status,Values=available \
  --query 'sum(Volumes[*].Size)' \
  --output text

# Multiply result by $0.10 for monthly gp3 cost or $0.125 for gp2

How to interpret: Each unattached volume costs ~$0.10/GB/month (gp3) or ~$0.125/GB/month (gp2). If you have 500GB unattached → ~$50/month ($600/year)

2. Unused Elastic IPs 🟢 SAFE

What to look for: Elastic IPs not associated with any running instance

Discovery Command:

# Find Elastic IPs not associated with any instance
aws ec2 describe-addresses \
  --query 'Addresses[?AssociationId==null].{IP:PublicIp,AllocationId:AllocationId}' \
  --output table

Cost: Each unused Elastic IP costs $3.60/month ($43.20/year)

3. Old EBS Snapshots 🟡 CAUTION

What to look for: Snapshots older than 90 days that may no longer be needed

Discovery Command:

# Find snapshots older than 90 days
aws ec2 describe-snapshots \
  --owner-ids self \
  --query 'Snapshots[?StartTime<=`'$(date -u -d '90 days ago' +%Y-%m-%d)'`].{ID:SnapshotId,Size:VolumeSize,Created:StartTime,Description:Description}' \
  --output table

Cost: $0.05/GB/month for snapshot storage

4. Stopped EC2 Instances 🟡 CAUTION

What to look for: Instances that have been stopped for extended periods

Discovery Command:

# Find stopped EC2 instances
aws ec2 describe-instances \
  --filters Name=instance-state-name,Values=stopped \
  --query 'Reservations[*].Instances[*].{ID:InstanceId,Type:InstanceType,Name:Tags[?Key==`Name`]|[0].Value,LaunchTime:LaunchTime}' \
  --output table

Note: Stopped instances still incur EBS storage costs but not compute costs.

5. Idle Load Balancers 🟡 CAUTION

Discovery Command:

# List all Application Load Balancers
aws elbv2 describe-load-balancers \
  --query 'LoadBalancers[*].{Name:LoadBalancerName,ARN:LoadBalancerArn,Created:CreatedTime,State:State.Code}' \
  --output table

Cost: Each Application Load Balancer costs ~$16-25/month base + data processing fees

6. NAT Gateways 🟡 CAUTION

Discovery Command:

# Find all NAT Gateways
aws ec2 describe-nat-gateways \
  --query 'NatGateways[?State==`available`].{ID:NatGatewayId,VPC:VpcId,Subnet:SubnetId,Created:CreateTime}' \
  --output table

Cost: Each NAT Gateway costs ~$32-45/month + data processing fees

7. Unused RDS Instances 🔴 DANGER

Discovery Command:

# List all RDS instances
aws rds describe-db-instances \
  --query 'DBInstances[*].{ID:DBInstanceIdentifier,Engine:Engine,Size:DBInstanceClass,Status:DBInstanceStatus,Created:InstanceCreateTime}' \
  --output table

Cost: RDS instances can range from $50-500+/month depending on instance type

8. Old AMIs and Associated Snapshots 🟢 SAFE

Discovery Command:

# Find your custom AMIs
aws ec2 describe-images \
  --owners self \
  --query 'Images[*].{ID:ImageId,Name:Name,Created:CreationDate,Size:BlockDeviceMappings[0].Ebs.VolumeSize}' \
  --output table

Cost: ~$0.05/GB/month for snapshot storage backing the AMIs

Complete Audit Checklist

| Priority | Resource Type | Monthly Cost Impact | Discovery Difficulty |
|–––––|—————|––––––––––|––––––––––||
| 🔴 High | Unused EC2 Instances | $50-500/instance | Easy |
| 🔴 High | Unattached EBS Volumes | $10-100/volume | Easy |
| 🔴 High | Idle RDS Instances | $50-500/instance | Medium |
| 🟡 Medium | Unused Elastic IPs | $3.60/IP | Easy |
| 🟡 Medium | Old EBS Snapshots | $5-50/TB | Easy |
| 🟡 Medium | Idle Load Balancers | $16-25/month | Medium |
| 🟡 Medium | NAT Gateways | $32-45/month | Medium |
| 🟢 Low | Old Lambda Versions | $0-5 | Easy |
| 🟢 Low | Unused AMIs | $0.05/GB | Easy |
| 🟢 Low | CloudWatch Logs | Varies | Easy |

Next Steps

1. Specify your AWS region(s): Which region should we audit?
2. Run the discovery commands: Start with items 1-3 above
3. Share the results: I’ll calculate exact potential savings and provide safe deletion commands
4. Production check: Do you have any active production workloads we need to be careful around?

⚠️ Multi-Region Reminder: Check all regions where you’ve deployed resources:

aws ec2 describe-regions --query 'Regions[*].RegionName' --output text