Difficulty
Medium
Description
We have identified Elastic File Systems (EFS) in your account that are idle — they have one or more mount targets but have not recorded any I/O activity in the last 7 days. Keeping idle file systems results in unnecessary storage costs with no value delivered.
Selection Criteria
The EFS has one or more mount targets.
The EFS has had zero read/write IOPS over the past 7 days.
Expected Saving
EFS Standard storage costs $0.30/GB/month. An idle file system with 100 GB costs $30/month with no workload benefiting from it.
Deleting it eliminates costs across all storage tiers (Standard, Infrequent Access, Archive).
Operational Impact
Breaking changes: Deleting an EFS permanently destroys all data stored in it and removes all associated mount targets and access points. Any EC2 instances, ECS tasks, or Lambda functions with the file system mounted will immediately lose access.
⚠️ Warning — Irreversible data loss: All data in the file system is permanently deleted. This action cannot be undone. Verify the file system is truly unused before proceeding.
⚠️ Warning — Backup first: Take an EFS Backup before deletion if there is any uncertainty about whether the stored data may be needed.