Resources keep running while doing nothing, nobody cleans up
AWS Lambda + EventBridge or Azure Automation Runbook or GCP Cloud Scheduler + Cloud Functions: a cron that detects idle resources and (after warning) cleans them up. Day's work setup, monthly savings.
Try this first
- 1Define 'idle': e.g. EC2 with < 5 percent CPU for 14 days, EBS volume unattached 30 days, ELB with 0 connections 7 days.
- 2Build a report-only step first, list to Slack or email. Run 2 weeks, tune false positives.
- 3Add action: stop / deallocate first (reversible), only terminate after 14 more days idle. Notify the owner 7 days ahead.
- 4For dev/staging: hard schedule, e.g. every Friday 18:00 all dev resources stop. Monday 8:00 back up. Saves a large chunk of compute time.
- 5Tagging strategy helps: 'autostop=false' for production or beheer batch. Then your cron skips them.
When to bring us in
If doing this cross-account or in a large org where you don't always know the owner, a short design session is worth it to make it scalable without collateral damage.
See also
- Everyone logs in with the AWS root accountRoot is for emergencies and billing. Day-to-day work belongs in IAM users or SSO.
- Every developer has AdministratorAccessAdministratorAccess everywhere is convenient now, painful later. Start with role-based policies.
- Everyone has individual IAM users with their own passwordIdentity Center (formerly AWS SSO) links to your IdP and issues temporary credentials per session.
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