What is AWS Trusted Advisor?
AWS Trusted Advisor is an automated best-practice auditor for your AWS environment. The service continuously analyzes your resources and compares them against AWS best practices across five categories: Cost Optimization, Performance, Security, Fault Tolerance, and Service Limits.
Core Features
- Cost Optimization: Identifies unused or underutilized resources
- Performance: Recommendations for optimal service configuration
- Security: Detects vulnerabilities like open ports or missing MFA
- Fault Tolerance: Checks redundancy and backup configurations
- Service Limits: Warns before reaching AWS quotas
Typical Use Cases
Continuous Cost Optimization: Trusted Advisor identifies unused EC2 instances, oversized RDS databases, and Reserved Instances with low utilization. Teams receive concrete savings opportunities with estimated monthly amounts.
Security Posture Improvement: Security teams use Trusted Advisor as a first line of defense. The service detects publicly accessible S3 buckets, unrestricted Security Groups, and root accounts without MFA.
Capacity Planning: Before major deployments, Trusted Advisor shows how close you are to service limits. This prevents surprises during scaling and enables timely limit increases.
Benefits
- Automatic identification of savings potential with concrete dollar amounts
- Proactive security warnings without additional tools
- Easy prioritization through urgency categorization
- Integration with CloudWatch for automated alerting workflows
Integration with innFactory
As an AWS Reseller, innFactory supports you with Trusted Advisor: dashboard setup, recommendation prioritization, remediation workflow implementation, and regular reviews.
Typical Use Cases
Frequently Asked Questions
Which checks are available in the free tier?
Basic Support includes 6 core checks: Service Limits, Security Groups with unrestricted access, IAM Use, MFA on Root Account, EBS Public Snapshots, and RDS Public Snapshots.
How many checks does Trusted Advisor offer in total?
With Business or Enterprise Support, you get access to all checks: over 50 checks across Cost Optimization, Performance, Security, Fault Tolerance, and Service Limits categories.
Can Trusted Advisor automatically fix problems?
Trusted Advisor identifies problems and provides recommendations but does not automatically remediate them. However, you can build automated remediation workflows using AWS Lambda and CloudWatch Events.
How often are checks updated?
Checks are automatically updated weekly. With Business or Enterprise Support, you can manually refresh checks and get API access for automated queries.