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AWS Sessions

In AWS projects, asking the right questions is crucial to ensuring efficiency, security, and performance.

This section will guide you through common queries and considerations you should keep in mind when managing AWS services, troubleshooting issues, or optimizing workflows.

Key areas of focus

Below are some example questions you can ask about your AWS resources, customized to help you manage and monitor your account effectively:

General resource management

  • What are all the resources currently running in my AWS account?
  • How much is my current AWS spend, and what services contribute the most to it?
  • Are there any underutilized resources in my account that I can downsize or terminate?
  • How do I optimize the cost of my EC2 instances?
  • What is the status of my reserved instances and savings plans?

EC2 instances

  • What EC2 instances are running, and how are they performing?
    • Follow-up: “What is the CPU or memory usage on instance X?”
  • Are there any EC2 instances that have high CPU utilization in the past 24 hours?
  • Which instances are nearing the end of their reserved instance term?
  • What EC2 instance types should I switch to for better cost savings?

S3 buckets

  • Which S3 buckets are public in my account?
  • Are there any S3 buckets with inactive object versioning?
  • What is the storage usage in my largest S3 bucket?
    • Follow-up: “Which objects take up the most space in this bucket?”
  • Are there any unencrypted S3 buckets in my account?

VPC & networking

  • What VPCs are currently deployed, and what resources are tied to them?
  • Are there any unused Elastic IPs in my account?
  • What is the current network traffic flow in my VPCs?
  • How many security groups are currently attached to my resources?
    • Follow-up: “Are any security groups too permissive?”

RDS & databases

  • What databases are currently active in my account?
  • Is there any unusual read/write activity on my RDS databases?
  • Are my databases running at optimal performance, or are they experiencing high CPU utilization?
  • When was the last backup taken for my RDS databases?
  • Do I have any old snapshots that can be deleted?

Lambda functions

  • Which Lambda functions are consuming the most invocations or memory?
  • Are there any Lambda functions that have not been invoked recently?
  • How is the overall performance of my Lambda functions?
  • What are the average response times of my Lambda functions?
    • Follow-up: “Were there any timeouts or memory throttling issues?”

CloudWatch & monitoring

  • What alarms are currently active in CloudWatch?
  • Have there been any recent breaches of my defined CloudWatch alarms?
  • Can I get a report of recent CloudWatch metrics for my key services (e.g., EC2, RDS, Lambda)?
  • What are the most common types of errors being logged in CloudWatch?

IAM & security

  • Are there any unused IAM users or roles in my account?
  • Which users have administrator privileges, and when was the last time they logged in?
  • Do any IAM users have outdated or inactive access keys?
  • What security best practices should I implement to strengthen my account’s security posture?

Cost management

  • What services are driving my highest costs this month?
  • Can I get a breakdown of the costs for my specific projects or environments (e.g., dev, prod)?
  • Which resources can I downsize or eliminate to reduce costs?
  • How do my costs compare to the previous billing period?