Right-sizing resources in AWS - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Right-sizing AWS EC2 Instances

📖 Scenario: You are managing cloud resources for a small company. They have several AWS EC2 instances running, but some are too large and costly for their needs. Your task is to help them identify and right-size these instances to save money while keeping performance.

🎯 Goal: Build a simple AWS resource configuration that lists EC2 instances with their current sizes and then creates a recommended smaller instance type for right-sizing.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a dictionary of EC2 instances with their current instance types

Add a configuration variable for the maximum allowed instance size

Write logic to recommend a smaller instance type if the current one is larger than allowed

Output the final dictionary with instance IDs and their recommended instance types

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Cloud engineers often need to optimize resource usage to reduce costs and improve efficiency. Right-sizing instances is a common task to avoid paying for more capacity than needed.

💼 Career

Understanding how to analyze and recommend resource sizes is valuable for roles like Cloud Engineer, DevOps Engineer, and Infrastructure Architect.

1

Create EC2 instances dictionary

Create a dictionary called ec2_instances with these exact entries: 'i-12345': 't3.large', 'i-67890': 't3.xlarge', 'i-abcde': 't2.medium'

AWS

# Create the ec2_instances dictionary with instance IDs and types
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use a Python dictionary with instance IDs as keys and instance types as values.

2

Add maximum allowed instance size

Add a variable called max_instance_size and set it to the string 't3.large'

AWS

ec2_instances = {'i-12345': 't3.large', 'i-67890': 't3.xlarge', 'i-abcde': 't2.medium'}
# Define max_instance_size variable
# Your code here

Need a hint?

This variable will help decide if an instance is too large.

3

Write right-sizing recommendation logic

Create a dictionary called recommended_sizes. Use a for loop with variables instance_id and instance_type to iterate over ec2_instances.items(). For each instance, if instance_type is larger than max_instance_size, set its recommended size to max_instance_size, otherwise keep the current instance_type.

AWS

ec2_instances = {'i-12345': 't3.large', 'i-67890': 't3.xlarge', 'i-abcde': 't2.medium'}
max_instance_size = 't3.large'
# Create recommended_sizes dictionary with right-sizing logic
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use a dictionary and a for loop to compare instance types and assign recommended sizes.

4

Complete with final recommended sizes dictionary

Add a final line that creates a variable called final_recommendations and sets it equal to recommended_sizes

AWS

ec2_instances = {'i-12345': 't3.large', 'i-67890': 't3.xlarge', 'i-abcde': 't2.medium'}
max_instance_size = 't3.large'

# Define an order for instance sizes to compare them properly
instance_size_order = ['t2.medium', 't3.large', 't3.xlarge']

recommended_sizes = {}
for instance_id, instance_type in ec2_instances.items():
    if instance_size_order.index(instance_type) > instance_size_order.index(max_instance_size):
        recommended_sizes[instance_id] = max_instance_size
    else:
        recommended_sizes[instance_id] = instance_type
# Set final_recommendations equal to recommended_sizes
# Your code here

Need a hint?

This final variable holds the right-sizing recommendations.