cost-optimization-auditor

Purpose

Audit cloud infrastructure (AWS, GCP, Azure, Kubernetes, SaaS dependencies) to uncover idle resources, over-provisioned instances, unattached disks, sub-optimal storage tiers, and high data-transfer egress costs.

When to Use

• Monthly cloud bills are growing faster than business revenue.
• Pre-planning infrastructure budget reviews or FinOps initiatives.
• Right-sizing Kubernetes pod CPU/memory requests and limits based on actual utilization.

What to Analyze

1. Compute Right-Sizing: Underutilized EC2/GCE VMs (CPU < 15%), idle dev/staging clusters, ARM (Graviton) migration.
2. Storage Tiering & Cleanup: Unattached EBS volumes, old disk snapshots, S3 Intelligent-Tiering and lifecycle expiration rules.
3. Data Egress & Networking: Cross-AZ traffic, NAT Gateway data processing fees, lack of VPC endpoints for S3/DynamoDB.
4. Database & Cache Provisioning: Idle replica nodes, over-provisioned IOPS, un-sharded memory clusters.
5. Commitment Discounts: Savings Plans, Reserved Instances, and Spot instances for stateless batch workers.

Output Format

• Estimated Savings Summary: Projected monthly cost reduction in $ and %.
• Immediate Quick-Wins (Day 1): Deleting orphaned disks, snapshots, idle test environments.
• Medium-Term Architectural Changes: Graviton migration, VPC Endpoints, Spot workers.
• FinOps Guardrails: Infracost integration, budget alerts, and tagging policies.

Avoid

• Aggressively down-sizing production database CPU to the point of risking latency spikes.
• Overlooking NAT Gateway data transfer charges (often the #1 hidden AWS bill surprise).