AWS Idle Classic Load Balancer

Rule Description

Rule Code: AWS-ELB-02

Identify any Amazon ELBs that appear to be idle and consider to terminate them.

By default, an Elastic Load Balancer is considered 'idle' when meets the following criteria:

  • The sum of the requests made to the load balancer in the past 7 days is less than 100.

Audit / Verification

Step 01: Sign in to the AWS Management Console.

AWS Console login

Step 02: Navigate Load Balance under Load Balancing section

Load Balancer

Step 03: Select your Elastic Load Balancer and navigate the Monitoring tab

Step 04: Select to view the Sum Requests (Count) usage graph. Verify the RequestCount usage for the last 7 days to check if the sum of the requests made to the Elastic Load Balancer in the past 7 days is less than 100, e.g.

If the sum of the requests made to the Elastic Load Balancer in the past 7 days is less than 100

It is recommended to check tagging to decide whether it's safe or not to terminate the resource.

Step 05: Repeat steps no. 4 to verify the RequestCount usage and the necessary tags for the rest of the load balancers in the current region.

Step 06: Switch to the other AWS regions and follow the same above audit process.