AWS Optimisation for Major Telecoms Company

Case Study at a Glance

The Challenge

In developing and maintaining software platforms, a constant level of new technical debt is generated.

If uncontrolled, technical debt would slow down the development of new functionality, as well as incur substantial AWS costs.

The challenge was to reduce technical debt and costs in an automated way, without removing anything still needed.

The Solution

Automation Consultants developed a series of Lambda scripts to meet the requirement.

Removal of obsolete AMI images and snapshots.

Automated archiving of CloudWatch logs.

Removal of disused Cloud9 instances.

The Benefit

Reduction in AWS costs by several tens of thousand dollars per month.

Reduction in technical debt by removing old AMIs and infractructure.

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The Challenge

Our customer, a major global mobile telecoms provider, uses Amazon Web Services (AWS) to provide the infrastructure for a number of different communications software platforms it provides for its business customers.

In developing and maintaining these applications, a constant level of new technical debt is generated as machine images become obsolete and old infrastructure is no longer needed.

If left uncontrolled, the technical debt would not only slow down the development of new functionality, but also incur substantial AWS costs.

The challenge was to reduce technical debt and costs in an automated way, without removing anything that is or may still be needed.

The Solution

Automation Consultants developed a series of Lambda scripts to meet the requirements.

Removal of obsolete AMI images and snapshots

Build-up of AMI images occurs with frequent copying in the course of building and testing the company’s software. The company also receives security-hardened AMIs from a supplier which are regularly updated to contain the latest security, and which render older AMIs obsolete.

Automated deregistration of older AMIs was executed via a Lambda script, which is initiated by passing a JSON parameter file to the script using the AWS SQS service. The script takes various parameters, such as the name or part name of the images to be deregistered and the minimum age an Image must have before it will be deregistered. The script can be run in trial mode, in which case it produces a list of images to be deregistered, or in live mode, in which case the images are actually deregistered.

Once the desired AMI images have been deregistered, the associated snapshots can be deleted. Another script was created to perform this function. The script deletes all snapshots older than a specified retention age and can also be run in trial mode.

Automated archiving of CloudWatch logos

The customer requires the archiving of certain CloudWatch logs for an extended period. This is achieved by a Lambda function which copies the relevant logs to S3, which are then transferred within S3 to Glacier Deep Archive.

The Lambda function is triggered by a ‘cron’ expression set to run every six hours. It takes only logs produced by certain functionality and ignores any others. Other logs are automatically deleted from CloudWatch after a certain time. The Lambda function creates a CloudWatch export task to a parametered S3 bucket. To avoid duplication, it keeps track of the timestamp of the most recent log to have been copied to S3, and will not copy any logs older than that timestamp.

Once the logs have been copied into S3, they are transferred automatically to Glacier Deep Archive by means of settings in the S3 bucket.

Removal of disused Cloud9 instances

The continuous development and maintenance effort put in by the customer to its software products for its business customers results in the creation and eventual abandonment of a large number of Cloud9 IDE instances.

We developed a Lambda function to remove disused Cloud9 instances. The solution uses Lambda EventBridge rules and SNS. The Lambda works only on instances containing a certain string reserved for Cloud9, identifying them as Cloud9 instances. It then determines whether the instance is stopped, and if so for how long. Any instance that has been stopped for more than 90 days is deleted. Any instance that has been stopped for more than 30 days but less than 90, is put on a notification list. After the script has run, a list of all the instances deleted and those on the notification list are sent by SNS to the relevant administrators.

The script is run every 15 days using EventBridge rules.

The Benefits

The AWS Optimisation carried out by Automation Consultants resulted in significant benefits for the global mobile telecoms provider. This includes:

Cost-saving

The solutions implemented by Automation Consultants have reduced AWS costs by several tens of thousand dollars per month.

Reduced technical debt

They also reduce technical debt by removing old AMIs and infrastructure, which could otherwise clutter up the lists of active infrastructure and create confusion around which are the correct infrastructure and images to use.

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