Identify any AWS Elastic Block Store (EBS) volumes that are currently attached to stopped EC2 instances and remove them if the instances are no longer needed in order avoid unexpected charges on your AWS bill.
This rule resolution is part of the Conformity Security & Compliance tool for AWS.
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Each EBS volume created in your AWS account is adding charges to your monthly bill regardless whether is being used or not by the associated EC2 instance, therefore any forgotten and unused EBS volume represents a good candidate to reduce your monthly AWS costs and avoid accumulating unnecessary usage charges.
Audit
To identify any AWS EBS volumes currently attached to stopped EC2 instances, perform the following:
Option 1: If the stopped EC2 instance and the attached EBS volume(s) are no longer needed, you can safely remove them from your account to avoid accumulating unnecessary charges. To delete the necessary EC2 resources, perform the following:
Note: Backup your EBS data first - once a volume is deleted, the data will be lost and the volume cannot be attached to an EC2 instance. Since EBS snapshots are much more cost-effective because are stored as objects using AWS Simple Storage Service (S3) service, it is recommended to create volume snapshots before deleting them.Option 2: If the stopped EC2 instance will be restarted soon, the attached EBS volume(s) cannot be removed, therefore no action is required.
References
- AWS Documentation
- Amazon EBS FAQs
- Amazon EBS Pricing
- Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS)
- Amazon EBS Volumes
- Amazon EBS Snapshots
- Terminate Your Instance
- AWS Command Line Interface (CLI) Documentation
- ec2
- describe-volumes
- describe-instances
- create-snapshot
- terminate-instances