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AWS Superseded EC2 Instances

What It Does

This policy template checks all the EC2 instances in an AWS Account to determine if the instance type has been superseded. If it has, the virtual machine is recommended for resizing to a more modern instance type. An incident listing all of these superseded EC2 instances is emailed to the user.

How It Works

  • The policy leverages the AWS API to retrieve all EC2 instances and then checks them against our internal database to see if their instance type has been superseded.
  • Flexera CCO billing data is pulled for these instances to assess the current cost of the instance as well as grab additional metadata about the instance, such as operating system, needed to calculate savings.
  • The recommendation provided for Superseded Instances is a Change Instance Type action; changing instance type can be performed in an automated manner or after approval.

Policy Savings Details

The policy includes the estimated monthly savings. The estimated monthly savings is recognized if the instance type is changed to the recommended instance type. The savings is calculated by taking the difference in the hourly list price between the current instance type and the recommended instance type. This value is then multiplied by 24 to get the daily savings, and then by 30.44 (the average number of days in a month) to get the monthly savings. The savings value is 0 if no cost information for the resource type was found in our internal database.

The savings is displayed in the Estimated Monthly Savings column. The incident message detail includes the sum of each resource Estimated Monthly Savings as Potential Monthly Savings. If the Flexera organization is configured to use a currency other than USD, the savings values will be converted from USD using the exchange rate at the time that the policy executes.

Input Parameters

  • Email Addresses - Email addresses of the recipients you wish to notify when new incidents are created.
  • Account Number - The Account number for use with the AWS STS Cross Account Role. Leave blank when using AWS IAM Access key and secret. It only needs to be passed when the desired AWS account is different than the one associated with the Flexera One credential. More information is available in our documentation.
  • Instance Type Category - Instance Type Category to pick from for recommended instance types.
    • Regular: Standard recommendations.
    • Next Gen: Recommend latest generation upgrade.
    • Burstable: Burstable instance type recommendations.
    • AMD: Recommend AMD-based latest generation upgrade. May provide additional savings.
  • Fallback Instance Type Category - Instance Type Category to pick from for recommended instance types if there are no valid recommendations for the primary category. Set to None to have no fallback.
  • Minimum Savings Threshold - Minimum potential savings required to generate a recommendation.
  • Exclusion Tags - The policy will filter resources containing the specified tags from the results. The following formats are supported:
    • Key - Filter all resources with the specified tag key.
    • Key==Value - Filter all resources with the specified tag key:value pair.
    • Key!=Value - Filter all resources missing the specified tag key:value pair. This will also filter all resources missing the specified tag key.
    • Key=~/Regex/ - Filter all resources where the value for the specified key matches the specified regex string.
    • Key!~/Regex/ - Filter all resources where the value for the specified key does not match the specified regex string. This will also filter all resources missing the specified tag key.
  • Exclusion Tags: Any / All - Whether to filter instances containing any of the specified tags or only those that contain all of them. Only applicable if more than one value is entered in the Exclusion Tags field.
  • Allow/Deny Regions - Whether to treat Allow/Deny Regions List parameter as allow or deny list. Has no effect if Allow/Deny Regions List is left empty.
  • Allow/Deny Regions List - A list of regions to allow or deny for an AWS account. Please enter the regions code if SCP is enabled. See Available Regions in AWS; otherwise, the policy may fail on regions that are disabled via SCP. Leave blank to consider all the regions.
  • Automatic Actions - When this value is set, this policy will automatically take the selected action(s).

Please note that the "Automatic Actions" parameter contains a list of action(s) that can be performed on the resources. When it is selected, the policy will automatically execute the corresponding action on the data that failed the checks, post incident generation. Please leave this parameter blank for manual action. For example if a user selects the "Change Instance Type" action while applying the policy, all the resources that didn't satisfy the policy condition will have their instance type changed.

Policy Actions

  • Sends an email notification
  • Change instance type after approval

Prerequisites

This Policy Template uses Credentials for authenticating to datasources -- in order to apply this policy you must have a Credential registered in the system that is compatible with this policy. If there are no Credentials listed when you apply the policy, please contact your Flexera Org Admin and ask them to register a Credential that is compatible with this policy. The information below should be consulted when creating the credential(s).

  • AWS Credential (provider=aws) which has the following permissions:

    • ec2:DescribeRegions
    • ec2:DescribeInstances
    • ec2:DescribeInstanceStatus*
    • ec2:DescribeTags
    • ec2:ModifyInstanceAttribute*
    • ec2:StartInstances*
    • ec2:StopInstances*
    • sts:GetCallerIdentity

    * Only required for taking action; the policy will still function in a read-only capacity without these permissions.

    Example IAM Permission Policy:

    {
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": [
                "ec2:DescribeRegions",
                "ec2:DescribeInstances",
                "ec2:DescribeInstanceStatus",
                "ec2:DescribeTags",
                "ec2:ModifyInstanceAttribute",
                "ec2:StartInstances",
                "ec2:StopInstances",
                "sts:GetCallerIdentity"
            ],
            "Resource": "*"
        }
    ]
}

  • Flexera Credential (provider=flexera) which has the following roles:

    • billing_center_viewer

The Provider-Specific Credentials page in the docs has detailed instructions for setting up Credentials for the most common providers.

Supported Clouds

  • AWS

Cost

This policy template does not incur any cloud costs.