One-Click Bulk Clean Up Orphaned and Unused EBS Snapshots

Hundreds of snapshots are often launched daily by an engineering team or generated automatically by AWS policies to back up data on EBS.

Outdated backups accumulate quickly, generating unnecessary costs — yet it takes considerable manual work to continually track down and clean up each unused snapshot.

What’s New: Automated Cleanup and Archiving

We’re excited to unveil Automated EBS Snapshot Cleanup, the latest addition to nOps Cloud Essentials. Now, you can automatically find and archive unused snapshots with a click, eliminating manual work and reducing costs. By moving snapshots to cold storage, you retain access while saving 75% on costs risk-free.

With nOps, you can save with the utmost confidence. Our algorithms are finely tuned to identify and analyze unused or redundant snapshots based on comprehensive criteria like age, expected frequency of use, and unreferenced data. nOps also intelligently excludes snapshots governed by existing AWS lifecycle policies, shared across accounts, or with critical features enabled. With the best, most reliable clean-up recommendations and one-click apply, engineers are freed to focus on innovation rather than maintenance.

With nOps, you can:

  • See and act on all archivable snapshots in one place: Our system uses AWS APIs and various algorithms to find all outdated snapshots, making it easy to take action
  • Save on storage risk-free: By archiving old snapshots to less expensive storage options, you maintain access to old data for significantly lower costs. This is particularly useful if you need to retain snapshots for compliance reasons
  • Stay continually optimized: One-click bulk cleanup helps you stay continually optimized for a fraction of the engineering time and effort
Review snapshots to archive in the nOps dashboard displaying Volume ID, snapshot size, annualized savings, snapshot age, and unrealized data percentage

How it Works

EBS Snapshot Cleanup integrates with AWS’s API to analyze snapshot data blocks, identifying unreferenced or outdated snapshots.

  1. nOps uses AWS APIs to pull detailed information about each snapshot’s data blocks. Each snapshot consists of numerous blocks (e.g., half a MB each for a 100 GB snapshot).
  2. The tool compares the data blocks between snapshots to determine uniqueness and relevance.
  3. The algorithm assesses snapshots based on several criteria:
    • Age and Frequency of Use: If a snapshot is the most recent snapshot and at least 30 days old, it is considered to be a full snapshot or an end of project snapshot. This indicates the snapshot won’t be frequently used, and can generate savings by being moved to the Archive tier.
    • Unreferenced Data: Snapshots that are not the most recent snapshot and contain more than 25% unreferenced data blocks are also considered outdated (as data contained are largely redundant and already included in other more recent snapshots, or has been removed).
    • Exclusion Rules: Snapshots are excluded from automatic cleanup recommendations if they:
      • Are already governed by existing AWS lifecycle policies
      • Are shared across accounts
      • Have enabled features like Fast Snapshot Restore
      • Are already on Archive tier
  4. Based on this analysis, the system recommends whether to archive snapshots. If recommendations are approved, archived snapshots are moved to cheaper storage tiers to reduce costs while retaining data access.
  5. Users can review these automated recommendations in one place in the nOps dashboard and choose to act on them in bulk, optimizing storage automatically and reducing costs.

Continuous EBS optimization

One-click delete idle EBS, migrate gp2 to gp, clean up snapshots
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Continuous Optimization with nOps Essentials

EBS Snapshot cleanup is just the latest feature added to nOps Essentials, your toolkit for fast and easy cloud optimization. Other nOps Essentials features include:

  • 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
  • One-click delete idle EBS volumes: Find and delete idle EBS volumes with the option to take a cost-effective snapshot for easy rollback

If you’re already on nOps…

Have questions about the new feature? Need help getting started? Our dedicated support team is here for you. Simply reach out to your Customer Success Manager or visit our Help Center. If you’re not sure who your CSM is, send our Support Team an email.

If you’re new to nOps…

nOps was recently ranked #1 with five stars in G2’s cloud cost management category, and we optimize $1.5+ billion in cloud spend for our customers.

Join our customers using nOps to understand your cloud costs and leverage automation with complete confidence by booking a demo with one of our AWS experts.