Finding and Deleting Orphaned EBS Volumes is Now a Breeze

When EC2 instances are routinely spun up and down, orphaned EBS volumes are a common oversight that commonly results in substantial cloud waste. Unless you select the “Delete on Termination” option during instance launch, terminating the EC2 instance will only detach the EBS volume, not delete it. As a result, EBS volumes that haven’t been used in weeks or months frequently accumulate, draining resources and inflating bills.

What’s New

nOps is launching a new feature that makes it easy to find and delete orphaned AWS Elastic Block Store (EBS) volumes for significant cost savings.

Now with nOps Essentials, you can detect and delete EBS volumes in a single click — saving you from the tedious and time-consuming process of manually cleaning them up.

Here’s how nOps makes the process better

  • Effortless EBS Volume Cleanup. nOps streamlines the process of identifying and deleting unused EBS volumes with just one click, eliminating the need for manual cleanup and saving valuable engineering time.
  • Minimal risk. Before deleting a volume, nOps offers the option to take a cost-effective snapshot to ensure you have a backup in case rollback is needed, providing full peace of mind while optimizing costs.
  • Intelligent savings. In some cases, such as Cold HDD (sc1) Volumes, you might not save by moving to a snapshot. nOps only offers recommendations that result in net savings.
Screenshot of EBS Savings Summary report in nOps Essentials
Clean up idle EBS volumes in the nOps Essentials dashboard

How it Works

Note: To access this feature, you must have purchased the nOps Essentials package.

1. If you’re onboarded to nOps, data will automatically be collected from your AWS API.

2. If an EBS volume is not associated or attached with any EC2 instance for the last 10 days, it is considered orphaned.

Screenshot of nOps confirmation message on deleting orphaned EBS volumes

3. If you will save by deleting the EBS volume, nOps will recommend that you do so and offer you the option to take a snapshot.

4. Review recommendations. When you accept recommendations, nOps will remove the orphaned EBS volumes.

How to Get Started

EBS Volume Cleanup is just the latest feature added to nOps Essentials, your toolkit for fast and easy cloud optimization. Get started with three free recommendations. Upgrade for unlimited EBS recommendations, as well as:

  • Resource Scheduling: Leveraging ML, nOps Essentials learns your usage patterns to recommend optimal scheduling, automatically implementing approved suggestions via certified AWS EventBridge integration
  • Rightsizing: Simply plug in your CloudWatch or Datadog monitoring solution for the most accurate, reliable and data-backed rightsizing recommendations available
  • One-click EBS volume migration: nOps automatically and intelligently updates EBS configurations from gp2 to gp3, offering up to 20% in cost savings and facilitating bulk storage instance updates
  • One-click stop idle EC2 instances: Halt idle instances effortlessly, for immediate savings while retaining full operational flexibility with the option to reactivate instances as needed

nOps is constantly releasing more features to automatically keep your cloud environment optimized, so you can focus on what matters most: building and innovating.

nOps manages over $1.5 billion in AWS spend and was recently ranked #1 in G2’s cloud cost management category. Book a demo to find out how to save in just 10 minutes.