Question: How do I optimize costs using AWS Trusted Advisor?

I want to know how to use Trusted Advisor for optimizing my costs.

ResolutionTrusted Advisor inspects your AWS infrastructure across all AWS Regions, and then presents a summary of check results.To view the Cost Optimization results and potential monthly savings with Trusted Advisor, open the Trusted Advisor console. Then, choose Cost Optimization in the navigation pane to view the potential monthly savings, cost optimization checks, and related recommendations. You can see 14 checks in the Cost Optimization pillar. You can weigh the status and recommendations provided against your requirements, and then act on or ignore the recommendations based on your business needs.Potential monthly savingsHere are a few things to keep in mind when reviewing the potential monthly savings:The potential monthly savings indicate the total amount that you can save each month, if you act on all recommendations across all the checks in the pillar.Your actual total savings might be less than the potential monthly savings, because some checks provide overlapping recommendations for the same resources.To avoid the overlap, act on the recommendations of one of the checks, and then refresh to see the updated recommendations on similar checks.The potential monthly savings are an estimate of how much you might possibly save. Actual cost savings might vary depending on your decision to purchase instances or nodes, such as Reserved Instances (RIs), Reserved Nodes, or Spot Instances.Cost optimization checks for underutilized resourcesThe following cost optimization checks inspect the utilization of resources and flag resources with low utilization:Amazon RDS Idle DB Instances inspects your Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) configuration for any DB instances that are idle. You see the yellow icon for this check result if an active DB instance did not have a connection in the last 7 days. You can take a snapshot, and then delete or stop the instance.Idle Load Balancers inspects your Elastic Load Balancing (ELB) configuration for inactive load balancers. You see the yellow icon for this check result if you have a load balancer that is not being actively used.Low Utilization Amazon EC2 Instances recommends stopping or terminating Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances with low utilization. You can also choose to scale your instances using Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling.Unassociated Elastic IP Addresses identifies the Elastic IP addresses in your account that are not associated with a running EC2 instance. Elastic IP addresses that aren't attached to a running instance incur charges. You can either associate the Elastic IP address with a running instance, or release it to reduce costs.Underutilized Amazon EBS Volumes inspects your Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) volume configurations for underused volumes. You can create a snapshot of the underused volumes and delete them to reduce your costs.Underutilized Amazon Redshift Clusters checks your Amazon Redshift configuration for underused clusters. You can create a snapshot of the cluster and shut it down. You can also choose to downsize the cluster.Cost optimization checks for reservationsThe following cost optimization checks provide reservation and savings plan recommendations:Amazon EC2 Reserved Instance Lease Expiration checks for Amazon EC2 RIs that are due for expiration in the next 30 days or has already expired in the last 30 days. You can choose to purchase new RIs based on this information.Amazon EC2 Reserved Instances Optimization, Amazon ElastiCache Reserved Node Optimization, Amazon OpenSearch Reserved Instance Optimization, Amazon Redshift Reserved Node Optimization, and Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) Reserved Instance Optimization checks inspect the usage of respective resources for the last 30 days. These checks provide recommendations on purchase of RIs and Reserved Nodes based on usage to help you reduce costs. You can see the Cost Explorer page for recommendations on the number and type of RIs that you need to purchase to maximize your savings.Savings Plan checks your compute usage for the last 30 days, and then provides Savings Plans recommendations.Here are a few things to consider when reviewing the reservation recommendations:The reservation and Savings Plan recommendations are provided based on the data from Cost Explorer.You can purchase reservations or Savings Plans in Cost Explorer based on Trusted Advisor recommendations.The reservation recommendations aren't available to linked accounts in organizations.The recommendations are provided based on your compute usage for the last 30 days.Other cost optimization checksThe Amazon Route 53 Latency Resource Record Set check inspects the Route 53 latency record sets that are configured inefficiently. This check recommends that you create a latency record set for each Region if you have resources in multiple Regions.

Related informationHow do I start using Trusted Advisor?