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Description

This policy flags AWS EBS Volumes that are considered idle. A volume is flagged as Idle if it meets one of the following conditions:

  1. It has been in an available state (unattached) for the past 30 days.
  2. It is in an in-use state (attached to an instance) but has recorded zero or null read and write operations (VolumeReadOps and VolumeWriteOps) over the last 30 days.

Rationale​

EBS volumes incur storage costs regardless of whether they are not attached to an instance or actively utilized.

  • Unattached Volumes: Volumes left in an available state often represent forgotten resources from decommissioned instances.
  • Attached but Inactive Volumes: Volumes that remain attached but show no I/O activity may indicate they are no longer required, are remnants of incomplete configurations, or serve as secondary/failover disks that require explicit documentation and justification.

Identifying and addressing idle volumes helps reduce unnecessary monthly costs and improves cloud resource efficiency.

Audit​

This policy flags an AWS EBS Volume as INCOMPLIANT if:

  1. The Volume Status is available and both CloudWatch: Write OPS Sum, 30-Day and CloudWatch: Write OPS Sum, 30-Day metrics are empty.
  2. The Volume Status is in-use and both CloudWatch: Write OPS Sum, 30-Day and CloudWatch: Write OPS Sum, 30-Day metrics are either empty or zero.

The EBS Volume is marked as INAPPLICABLE if:

  • Its Status is other than in-use or available.
  • Its Create Time is less than 30 days ago.
  • Its Attachment Attach Time is within the last 30 days.