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EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud)

CostCutter manages deletion of EC2 resources including compute instances and their associated storage and networking components.

Supported Resources

Resource Config Key What Gets Deleted
Instances instances All EC2 instances (running, stopped, etc.)
Volumes volumes All EBS volumes (attached and unattached)
Snapshots snapshots All EBS snapshots owned by the account
Elastic IPs elastic_ips All allocated Elastic IP addresses
Key Pairs key_pairs All EC2 key pairs
Security Groups security_groups All custom security groups (default SGs are skipped)

Risk Levels

Resource Risk Impact
Instances 🔴 High Running workloads terminated, data on instance storage lost
Volumes 🔴 High All data on EBS volumes permanently deleted
Snapshots 🟡 Medium Backup snapshots deleted (source volumes unaffected)
Elastic IPs 🟢 Low IP addresses released back to AWS pool
Security Groups 🟢 Low Firewall rules removed
Key Pairs 🟡 Medium SSH access keys deleted from AWS (local .pem files unaffected)

Deletion Order Within EC2

EC2 resources are deleted in dependency order:

flowchart TB
    INST["1. Instances"] --> VOL["2. Volumes"]
    INST --> EIP["3. Elastic IPs"]
    INST --> SG["4. Security Groups"]

    VOL --> KEYS["5. Key Pairs"]
    SG --> KEYS

    KEYS --> SNAP["6. Snapshots"]

Note: Instances must terminate first to release volumes, IPs, and security groups. Key Pairs and Snapshots are independent.

What Happens

Instances

  • Action: terminate_instances with Force=True, SkipOsShutdown=True
  • Behavior: Immediately terminates instances without graceful shutdown
  • Instance storage: Data on instance store volumes is lost
  • EBS volumes: Root volumes are deleted; additional volumes marked for deletion

Volumes

  • Action: delete_volume
  • Behavior: Deletes the volume and all data
  • Attached volumes: Only deleted after instance termination (automatic detach)

Snapshots

  • Action: delete_snapshot
  • Behavior: Removes the snapshot from AWS
  • Source volumes: Unaffected-snapshots are independent copies

Elastic IPs

  • Action: release_address
  • Behavior: Returns the IP address to the AWS pool
  • Associated IPs: Automatically disassociated when instances terminate

Key Pairs

  • Action: delete_key_pair
  • Behavior: Removes the public key from AWS
  • Local files: Your local .pem file is not affected
  • Access: You cannot create new instances with this key pair

Security Groups

  • Action: delete_security_group
  • Behavior: Removes the security group and all rules
  • Default SG: The default security group cannot be deleted (AWS restriction)
  • Dependencies: Ingress/egress rules referencing other groups are cleared first

Limitations

CostCutter's EC2 handling does not:

  • Preserve instances with specific tags
  • Wait for graceful shutdown
  • Back up volumes before deletion
  • Handle Auto Scaling Groups (use Elastic Beanstalk or manual cleanup)
  • Manage Launch Templates or AMIs

Example: EC2 Only

# costcutter.yaml
aws:
  services:
    - ec2
  region:
    - us-east-1

costcutter --dry-run --services ec2