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unused_volumes

README.md

Azure Unused Volumes

What It Does

This Policy Template scans all volumes in the given account and identifies any volume that meets the user-specified criteria for being unused. The user can filter volumes based on age, whether they are currently attached to a VM, whether there has been any read/write activity on the volume over a user-specified number of days, or any combination of these. Any volumes that meet the user-specified criteria are considered unused. If any unused volumes are found, an incident report will show the volumes and related information. An email will be sent to the user-specified email addresses.

If the user approves that the volumes should be deleted, the policy will delete the volumes. If the volume is not getting deleted because it is locked, then the volume will be tagged to indicate the error that was received. If the issue causing delete failure is removed, the next run of the policy will delete the volume. The unused volumes report will reflect the updated set of unused volumes on the subsequent run.

Note: Previous versions of this policy had the option to filter results by how long a volume was detached. This functionality did not work as expected due to Azure volume logs not recording detachment events. Such events are recorded in the logs of the VM the volume was detached from, and there is currently no way to determine the most recently attached VM for a volume through Azure's APIs. For this reason, this functionality was removed.

Policy Savings Details

The policy includes the estimated monthly savings. The estimated monthly savings is recognized if the resource is terminated.

  • The Estimated Monthly Savings is calculated by multiplying the amortized cost of the resource for 1 day, as found within Flexera CCO, by 30.44, which is the average number of days in a month.
  • Since the costs of individual resources are obtained from Flexera CCO, they will take into account any Flexera adjustment rules or cloud provider discounts present in the Flexera platform.
  • If the resource cannot be found in Flexera CCO, the Estimated Monthly Savings is 0.
  • The incident message detail includes the sum of each resource Estimated Monthly Savings as Potential Monthly Savings.
  • Both Estimated Monthly Savings and Potential Monthly Savings will be reported in the currency of the Flexera organization the policy is applied in.

Input Parameters

This policy has the following input parameters required when launching the policy.

  • Email addresses to notify - Email addresses of the recipients you wish to notify when new incidents are created.
  • Azure Endpoint - The endpoint to send Azure API requests to. Recommended to leave this at default unless using this policy with Azure China.
  • Minimum Savings Threshold - Minimum potential savings required to generate a recommendation.
  • Minimum Age (Days) - The minimum age, in days, since a volume was created to produce recommendations for it. Set to 0 to ignore age entirely.
  • Unused Days - The number of days a volume has been unused as determined by read/write activity. This value cannot be set higher than 90 because Azure does not retain metrics for longer than 90 days.
  • Volume Status - Whether to include attached volumes, unattached, or both in the results.
  • Allow/Deny Subscriptions - Determines whether the Allow/Deny Subscriptions List parameter functions as an allow list (only providing results for the listed subscriptions) or a deny list (providing results for all subscriptions except for the listed subscriptions).
  • Allow/Deny Subscriptions List - A list of allowed or denied Subscription IDs/names. If empty, no filtering will occur and recommendations will be produced for all subscriptions.
  • Allow/Deny Regions - Whether to treat Allow/Deny Regions List parameter as allow or deny list. Has no effect if Allow/Deny Regions List is left empty.
  • Allow/Deny Regions List - Filter results by region, either only allowing this list or denying it depending on how the above parameter is set. Leave blank to consider all the regions.
  • Exclusion Tags - The policy will filter resources containing the specified tags from the results. The following formats are supported:
    • Key - Filter all resources with the specified tag key.
    • Key==Value - Filter all resources with the specified tag key:value pair.
    • Key!=Value - Filter all resources missing the specified tag key:value pair. This will also filter all resources missing the specified tag key.
    • Key=~/Regex/ - Filter all resources where the value for the specified key matches the specified regex string.
    • Key!~/Regex/ - Filter all resources where the value for the specified key does not match the specified regex string. This will also filter all resources missing the specified tag key.
  • Exclusion Tags: Any / All - Whether to filter instances containing any of the specified tags or only those that contain all of them. Only applicable if more than one value is entered in the Exclusion Tags field.
  • Create Final Snapshot - Whether or not to take a final snapshot before deleting an unused volume.
  • Automatic Actions - When this value is set, this policy will automatically take the selected action(s).

Please note that the "Automatic Actions" parameter contains a list of action(s) that can be performed on the resources. When it is selected, the policy will automatically execute the corresponding action on the data that failed the checks, post incident generation. Please leave it blank for manual action. For example if a user selects the "Delete Unused Volumes" action while applying the policy, the identified resources will be deleted.

Policy Actions

The following policy actions are taken on any resources found to be out of compliance.

  • Send an email report
  • Delete unused volumes after approval

Prerequisites

This Policy Template uses Credentials for authenticating to datasources -- in order to apply this policy you must have a Credential registered in the system that is compatible with this policy. If there are no Credentials listed when you apply the policy, please contact your Flexera Org Admin and ask them to register a Credential that is compatible with this policy. The information below should be consulted when creating the credential(s).

  • Azure Resource Manager Credential (provider=azure_rm) which has the following permissions:

    • Microsoft.Compute/disks/read
    • Microsoft.Compute/disks/write*
    • Microsoft.Compute/snapshots/write*
    • Microsoft.Compute/virtualMachines/read*
    • Microsoft.Compute/virtualMachines/write*
    • Microsoft.Insights/metrics/read

    * Only required for taking action; the policy will still function in a read-only capacity without these permissions.

  • Flexera Credential (provider=flexera) which has the following roles:

    • billing_center_viewer

The Provider-Specific Credentials page in the docs has detailed instructions for setting up Credentials for the most common providers.

Supported Clouds

  • Azure

Cost

This policy template does not incur any cloud costs.