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Delete Unused AWS EBS Volumes

Risk level: Medium

Rule ID: EBS-001

An Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) volume is distinct from the lifecycle of its associated Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instance. EBS volumes are attached to EC2 Instances as storage devices. By default, unless you select the “Delete on Termination” option during instance launch, terminating the EC2 instance will only detach the EBS volume, not delete it. In dynamic development and testing environments where EC2 instances are frequently launched and terminated, this can result in an accumulation of idle EBS volumes. These unused volumes incur charges in your AWS account, even when they’re not in use. To improve cost efficiency, it’s essential to eliminate these unused volumes. Additionally, deleting inactive EBS volumes is a crucial security measure to prevent unauthorized access to any sensitive data that might be stored on them.

Rule EBS- 001 checks whether there are unused EBS Volumes in your AWS account. This rule can help you with the following as well:

Compliance frameworks report

  • SOC 2 Readiness Report

AWS Well-Architected Lens

  • AWS Well-Architected Framework Lens

Audit

Carry out the following steps to find out if there are any unused EBS volumes in your cloud environment:

Remediation

How Can nOps Help With Identifying And Deleting Unused EBS Volumes?

nOps maximizes cost savings on auto-pilot, with seamless one-click integration with your cloud services. We achieve this with zero engineering effort and complete reliability. With regard to different standards and guidelines, nOps Rules have been curated by drawing insights from sources like compliance controls, the well-architected framework, and customer feedback to assess AWS Workloads. The platform ensures alignment with key areas: Security, Cost, Reliability, Performance, and Operations, making it easier to spot deviations or issues.

Unused EBS
The “Unused EBS Volumes Rule” is a valuable feature by nOps. It helps identify volumes that currently reside in an unattached or available state and also monitors stopped EBS volumes. With various useful filters, nOps allows you to focus on specific aspects such as by account or region. Additionally, you can take action by downloading a complete list of EBS Volumes in CSV format, facilitating thorough analysis and seamless collaboration with your team via Jira.
With each EBS Volume, the Resource Detail button offers granular details such as region, resource ID, cost implications, IOPS, size metrics, associated snapshots, tags, and more. This level of granularity allows you to make more data-based informed decisions. With nOps Rules, you can easily spot unused EBS Volumes to save costs and improve efficiency in your AWS workload.

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