Chapter 74: AWS Trusted Advisor
AWS Trusted Advisor
This is not just “another dashboard”. It is your personal AWS health & best-practice inspector — a free (with some paid upgrades) automated checker that continuously scans your entire AWS account(s) and tells you:
- “You are doing this wrong — and it can cost you money / expose you to risk / make your app less reliable”
- “Here is exactly how to fix it — usually with one click or one line of code”
Let me explain it like we’re sitting together with a whiteboard and a second cup of Irani chai — slow, clear, step-by-step, full of real analogies, actual Hyderabad startup & mid-size company examples from 2026, and exactly why smart teams treat Trusted Advisor like a daily / weekly health check-up.
1. What is AWS Trusted Advisor? (Very Simple First)
AWS Trusted Advisor is an automated best-practice checker that inspects your AWS environment against hundreds of predefined rules in five main categories:
- Cost Optimization (are you wasting money?)
- Security (are you exposed to risk?)
- Fault Tolerance (will your app survive an AZ outage?)
- Service Limits (are you about to hit a quota?)
- Performance (is anything running slower than it should?)
It runs continuously (refreshes every few hours to daily depending on the check) and gives you:
- Green = good / compliant
- Yellow = warning / improvement opportunity
- Red = critical issue / immediate action needed
Official short line (still accurate in 2026): “Trusted Advisor provides recommendations that help you follow AWS best practices.”
In plain Hyderabad language:
Imagine you own 5 biryani outlets in different parts of the city.
You can’t visit all 5 every day to check:
- Are the gas cylinders leaking? (security)
- Are you buying too much rice when you have stock in another outlet? (cost)
- Is the fridge running 24/7 even when empty? (performance)
- Can the kitchen survive if one power line fails? (fault tolerance)
- Are you close to the fire-safety limit of cylinders per outlet? (service limits)
Trusted Advisor = your tireless assistant manager who walks through all 5 outlets every few hours, takes photos, writes a short report, and sends you only the 3–5 things you actually need to fix today — instead of 50 green “all okay” items.
2. The Five Main Categories & Most Common Checks (2026 Reality)
| Category | What it checks for | Typical severity in Hyderabad startups (2026) | Real example finding | Fix usually takes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cost Optimization | Idle resources, underused Reserved Instances, over-provisioned DB instances | Very high (most startups bleed money here) | “EC2 instance t3.medium running at 5 % CPU for 14 days — consider downsizing or stopping” | 5–15 min |
| Security | Open security groups, public S3 buckets, IAM key rotation, MFA not enabled on root | High (RBI/DPDP Act exposure) | “Security group allows 0.0.0.0/0 on port 22 (SSH)” | 2–10 min |
| Fault Tolerance | Single-AZ RDS, no Multi-AZ, no Auto Scaling Group | Medium–high (outage risk) | “RDS instance is Single-AZ — enable Multi-AZ for high availability” | 5–30 min |
| Service Limits | Approaching VPC limit, EBS volume limit, EC2 instance limit | Low–medium (sudden block when scaling) | “You have used 95 % of your VPCs per Region limit” | 1–2 days (request increase) |
| Performance | High load balancers with no connection draining, EBS with low IOPS | Medium (slow app complaints) | “ALB has no cross-zone load balancing enabled” | 5–15 min |
3. Free vs Business / Enterprise Support (Very Important Difference)
| Support Plan | Trusted Advisor checks available | How many checks? | Typical Hyderabad team using this plan | Monthly cost (rough) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Basic / Developer | Only 7 core security & service limit checks | 7 | Students, very early startups | Free / ~₹1,000 |
| Business Support | All checks (~70–100 depending on region) | Full | Most scaling startups & mid-size companies | ~₹7,500–25,000 |
| Enterprise On-Ramp / Enterprise | Full + AWS Trusted Advisor Priority (human-prioritized critical issues) | Full + priority | Serious fintech, health-tech, large SaaS | ₹25,000+ |
2026 reality in Hyderabad:
- Almost every startup with > ₹50,000 monthly AWS bill upgrades to Business Support mainly for full Trusted Advisor access — it pays for itself within 1–2 months by finding idle resources & misconfigurations.
4. Real Hyderabad Example — Trusted Advisor in Action
Your startup “TeluguBites” (restaurant discovery + food ordering) — 8 developers, 3 DevOps, 5 AWS accounts (dev, staging, prod, analytics, security-audit)
Typical weekly routine (very common in 2026):
-
Monday morning — DevOps lead opens Trusted Advisor dashboard (AWS Console → Trusted Advisor)
-
Sees 3 red & 8 yellow findings:
- Red #1 (Security): “Security group allows 0.0.0.0/0 on port 22” → Fix: update security group → 2 minutes
- Red #2 (Cost): “EC2 instance t3.medium running at 4 % CPU for 21 days” → Fix: downsize to t3.micro or stop instance → saves ~₹1,800/month
- Yellow (Fault Tolerance): “RDS instance db-prod is Single-AZ” → Fix: enable Multi-AZ (automatic failover) → ~15 minutes
- Yellow (Service Limits): “VPC limit 90 % used in ap-south-2” → Fix: request limit increase via AWS support → 1–2 days
-
After fixes → Trusted Advisor score improves from 78/100 → 94/100
-
Team schedules weekly “Trusted Advisor Monday” — 15-minute review
Monthly impact:
- Found & fixed idle resources → saved ~₹6,000–15,000/month
- Fixed security group → avoided potential breach
- Enabled Multi-AZ on RDS → app survived rare AZ degradation without outage
5. Quick Hands-On — See Trusted Advisor Right Now
- Log in to AWS Console → search “Trusted Advisor”
- Open Trusted Advisor dashboard
- Look at Security category → see if any red items (e.g., open security group)
- Look at Cost Optimization → see idle resources recommendations
- Click any red/yellow item → read detailed explanation + one-click fix links (where available)
Cost?
- Basic checks — free
- Full checks — requires Business Support or higher (~₹7,500+/month)
Summary Table — AWS Trusted Advisor Cheat Sheet (2026 – India Focus)
| Question | Answer (Beginner-Friendly) |
|---|---|
| What is Trusted Advisor? | Automated best-practice checker — cost, security, fault tolerance, limits, performance |
| Free vs paid? | 7 basic checks free; full checks require Business Support (~₹7,500+/month) |
| How often to check? | Weekly for startups; daily for production-critical apps |
| Most valuable category? | Cost Optimization (finds idle resources) + Security (finds open ports/public buckets) |
| Best practice for Hyderabad startup? | Enable Business Support early (when bill > ₹50,000/month) → use Trusted Advisor weekly |
| First thing to do today? | Open Trusted Advisor → fix any red Security or Cost items |
Teacher’s final note (real talk – Hyderabad 2026):
Trusted Advisor is like your free AWS doctor — it scans your account every few hours and tells you “you have high cholesterol (idle EC2), high blood pressure (open security group), and you’re close to maxing out your credit limit (service limits)”.
Most Hyderabad startups & mid-size companies that reach ₹50,000–1 lakh monthly AWS bill upgrade to Business Support mainly for full Trusted Advisor — it usually pays for itself in 1–2 months by finding wasted resources & risky configurations.
Do this today:
- Open Trusted Advisor dashboard
- Fix any red Security items immediately (public buckets, open ports)
- Look at Cost Optimization → stop/downsize idle instances
- If your monthly bill is > ₹50,000 → seriously consider Business Support for full checks
Got it? This is the “let AWS tell you what you’re doing wrong before it hurts” lesson.
Next?
- Step-by-step: Fix top 5 Trusted Advisor findings in a typical startup account?
- Deep dive: Cost Optimization checks — how to interpret & act on idle resources?
- Or how Trusted Advisor integrates with AWS Budgets & Cost Anomaly Detection?
Tell me — next whiteboard ready! 🚀🩺
