🛡️ AWS EC2 Instance is located in a less cost-effective region🟢

• Contextual name: 🛡️ Instance is located in a less cost-effective region🟢
• ID: /ce/ca/aws/ec2/instance-cost-effective-region
• Tags:
  • 🟢 Policy with categories
  • 🟢 Policy with type
  • 🟢 Production policy
• Policy Type: BEST_PRACTICE
• Policy Categories: COST
• Tags: Compute, Effort: High

Stats

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Logic

• 🧠 prod.logic.yaml🟢
  • 📗 AWS EC2 Instance
  • 🔌 AWS EC2 Instance - object.extracts.yaml
  • 🧪 test-data.json

Description

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Description

This policy identifies AWS EC2 Instances that are provisioned in AWS regions known to have higher pricing compared to nearby alternatives.

Rationale

Although pricing varies by instance type, certain AWS regions generally incur higher costs for compute resources. Running workloads in these regions can significantly increase operational expenses without delivering additional benefits, unless the region is specifically required for latency, compliance, or data residency. Identifying these instances allows you to assess whether migrating them to a lower-cost region is feasible, potentially resulting in substantial savings.

Impact

Migrating workloads to different regions requires careful planning to avoid service disruptions and to ensure latency, compliance, and data sovereignty requirements continue to be met.

Audit

This policy flags an AWS EC2 Instance as INCOMPLIANT if it is running in one of the following regions identified as less cost-efficient:

| Region | Recommended Alternative |

... see more

Remediation

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Remediation

Migrating an EC2 instance to a different region is a significant operation that requires careful planning to minimize downtime and ensure application functionality. Before proceeding, confirm whether the current region is required for business reasons such as latency, compliance, or data residency.

If the instance can be moved, follow this general process:

Step 1: Create an Amazon Machine Image (AMI)

Create an AMI of the existing instance:

aws ec2 create-image \
    --instance-id {{instance-id}} \
    --name "{{ami-name}}" \
    --description "{{ami-description}}" \
    --no-reboot

The --no-reboot option avoids downtime during image creation but may result in filesystem inconsistencies. Omit this option if data consistency is critical.

Step 2: Copy the AMI to the Target Region

Copy the AMI to a more cost-effective region (e.g., us-east-2, us-west-2):

aws ec2 copy-image \
    --source-image-id {{ami-id}} \
    --source-region {{ami-region}} \
    --region {{destination-region}} \
    --name "{{new-ami-name}}" \

... [see more](remediation.md)

policy.yaml

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Linked Framework Sections

Section	Sub Sections	Internal Rules	Policies	Flags	Compliance
💼 Cloudaware Framework → 💼 Resource Optimization			37		no data