AWS Billing – What is EC2-Other

AWS Billing – What is EC2-Other

One question I always get relates to AWS billing,
specifically EC2-other. Hopefully, this post will help you breakdown what makes
up EC2-other so you can make adjustments to your account if needed.

To get started head over to the Billing Management Console
and launch Cost Explorer.

1.    
Change the time frame to the one you are interested in.

2.    
Under Services – Select EC2-Other

3.    
Change Group By to Usage Type and your costs will be broken in more detail. See the breakdown below. You costs will vary depending on what EC2 related services you are using

Let’s take a brief look at these categories and give a brief
interpretation of what is driving these costs.

EBSVolumeUsage – This is the cost related to the EBS volumes
attached or detached  to your EC2 instances. If you have volumes that are not attached and not being used you should review and see if they can be deleted to reduce costs.

DataTransferRegional – Typically data in to AWS is free but
this costs can depending on the following:

VPC peering

Elastic IP usage

Load Balancer usage

Other scenarios depending on which AWS services are used

EBS:Snapshot Usage – This is one area you should definitely
review. If you have orphaned snapshots from old AMI’s or volumes. You will get charged for them. If your storage costs go up each bill but your ec2 instance pretty much stay the same. This maybe the area to review.

ElasticIP:IdleAdd… – This one is easiest to explain. You
are charged for idle elastic IPs. After this report I added a config rule to check for unattached ElasticIP

USE2-EBS:Snapshot – I am still trying to figure this one
out and will update the post once I find out what these costs are related to.

NatGateway-Hours – Self-explanatory

As you see it can take some digging to breakdown your bill unless you are using a cost reporting service. Regardless of how your costs analysis is handle. One best practice is to cost tag your resources with descriptive tags that will allow you to drill down but these tags. They can provide insight into what resources are associated with your costs.