AWS Underutilized EC2 Instance

Rule Description

Rule Code: AWS-EC2-01

Identify and consider to resize any EC2 instances with low CPU utilization.

The average CPU utilization has been between 1% and 40% for the last 7 days.

Audit / Verification

Step 01: Sign in to the AWS Management Console.

AWS Console login

Step 02: Access to EC2 dashboard. In the navigation panel, choose Instances

Navigate EC2

Step 03: Select the EC2 instance that you need to check:

Step 04: Select the Monitoring tab from the dashboard bottom panel. In the CloudWatch metrics section, follow these steps as below:

  • Click on the CPU Utilization (Percent) usage graph to verify the instance CPU usage for the last 7 days.
  • Verify if the average usage (percent) has been less than 40%

Step 05: Repeat steps no. 4 to verify the CPU available in the last 7 days for the other EC2 instances in the current region.

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