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Unused AMIs

Amazon Machine Images (AMIs) are templates for launching EC2 instances. While AMIs themselves don't have an hourly cost, they incur storage charges through their associated EBS snapshots.

Implementation Effort: Low - Estimated time: less than 30 minutes. Deregister unused AMIs and optionally delete associated snapshots to reclaim storage costs.

What We Detect

  • Never-used AMIs -- AMIs that have never been used to launch an instance
  • Stale AMIs -- AMIs that haven't been used to launch an instance in a long time

Organizations accumulate AMIs from automated backups, CI/CD pipelines, legacy application versions, and abandoned experiments. These continue to incur EBS snapshot storage costs even when they're never used.

Why It Matters

AMI storage costs are based on the underlying EBS snapshots (~$0.05/GB-month). A 100 GB AMI costs approximately $5/month. With dozens of forgotten AMIs, costs add up quickly.

Recommendations

  1. Check that no Auto Scaling Groups, Launch Templates, or Image Builder pipelines reference the AMI
  2. Document the AMI details for reference
  3. Deregister the AMI and delete its associated snapshots

Keep on chasing 🧡