Netflix open sources tool to clean up your AWS cloud

Grazed from GigaOM. Author: Barb Darrow.

Netflix open sourced the code to Janitor Monkey, a tool it uses to automate the deletion of unused Amazon Web Services resources. It’s easy to spin up cloud compute instances, but not so easy to shut them down as they fall into disuse.

Those Netflix engineers are at it again — releasing source code to an in-house tool they use to keep their Amazon Web Services pared down and tidy. Janitor Monkey is a tool they use to automate the detection and clean up of unused AWS resources. The advantage of public cloud infrastructure is it’s so easy to spin up new compute instances and add storage willy nilly but not so easy to keep track of those resources as they fall into disuse. That leads to a profusion of under-utilized or totally unused resources — the untidy closet aspect of cloud computing…

Before, Netflix engineers could use its Asgard cloud deployment tool to manually delete these unused resources but automation is key here — especially for big, spread-out workloads. Janitor Monkey is the latest member of Netflix’s Simian Army tool set which also includes Chaos Monkey. Open sourced in July, Chaos Monkey shuts down computing instances in a controlled way to ensure that applications keep running even when a virtual server goes down unexpectedly…

Read more from the source @ http://gigaom.com/cloud/netflix-open-sources-tool-to-clean-up-your-aws-cloud/