How many detached EBS volumes do you have in your AWS accounts? How many unnecessary EBS snapshots are you paying for?
You can save money by deleting any detached EBS volumes and deleting old EBS snapshots that you no longer require.
“You will be charged for the IOPS provisioned on a volume even when the volume is detached from an instance.” – AWS
EBS Volume Costs
Example yearly expenditure on single attached (or detached) volume:
- x1 20GB detached general purpose (gp2) volume for 1 year: $0.10 * 20 * 12 = 24 USD
- x1 20GB provisioned IOPS (io1) volume for 1 year: ($0.125 + $0.065) * 20 * 12 = 45.60 USD (however, this depends largely on what the provisioned IOPS are)
Example yearly expenditure on a single snapshot stored in S3:
- x1 20GB snapshot for 1 year: $0.05 * 20 * 12 = 12 USD
Calculations derived from AWS Simple Monthly Calculator and EBS Pricing.
These costs mount up when you have tens or hundreds of unused EBS volumes and EBS snapshots. Snapshots are cheaper than volumes but many teams will be automatically creating snapshots in but not cleaning them up so things can become costly.
Although you can get rid of your detached volumes and old snapshots, how do you automate deleting AWS EBS snapshots? How do you prevent future wastage? You need to write automation scripts to achieve this. However, automated scripts will require maintaining and your time could probably be better spent working on the core parts of your business.
GorillaStack are preparing to release a new product to automate EBS cleanup and reduce your EBS costs. Please get in touch if you’re interested in getting early access!
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