Explanation
Why the waste happens and who it affects.
Instances that show consistently low usage across time, such as those used only for occasional tasks, test environments, or forgotten workloads, may be overprovisioned relative to their actual needs.
Billing model
The pricing dimensions that drive this cost.
Charged per OCPU-hour and per GB-hour of memory provisioned, billed per second of usage (one-minute minimum for VMs, one-hour minimum for bare metal), regardless of utilization. Stopping an instance pauses billing for Standard shapes, but Dense I/O shapes continue to bill while stopped.
How to detect
5 checks to find it in your estate.
- Review instance-level CPU and memory utilization over a representative period
- Identify instances with consistently low activity relative to their allocated resources
- Evaluate whether the instance supports critical workloads or is part of a dev/test environment
- Assess whether rightsizing (smaller shape) or scheduled shutdown is feasible
- Check for seasonal or workload-specific spikes that might justify current size
How to fix
4 ways to remove the waste.
- Rightsize the instance to a smaller shape that matches workload requirements
- Replace with burstable or flexible instance types where applicable
- Implement scheduled start/stop automation for predictable idle periods
- Decommission if no longer in use
Documentation
Vendor references for pricing and configuration.