Computeoptimizer Diagnostics

AWS Compute Optimizer Diagnostics

When to use

Any AWS Compute Optimizer investigation — EC2/Lambda/EBS/ECS recommendations, enrollment, or export.

Investigation workflow

Step 1 — Collect and triage

aws compute-optimizer get-enrollment-status
aws compute-optimizer get-enrollment-statuses-for-organization
aws compute-optimizer get-recommendation-summaries

Step 2 — Domain deep dive

aws compute-optimizer get-ec2-instance-recommendations --instance-arns <arn>
aws compute-optimizer get-lambda-function-recommendations --function-arns <arn>
aws compute-optimizer get-ebs-volume-recommendations --volume-arns <arn>
aws compute-optimizer get-ecs-service-recommendations --service-arns <arn>

Step 3 — Detailed investigation

aws compute-optimizer get-ec2-recommendation-projected-metrics --instance-arn <arn> --stat Maximum --period 86400 --start-time <start> --end-time <end>
aws compute-optimizer describe-recommendation-export-jobs

Read references/guardrails.md before concluding on any Compute Optimizer issue.

Gotchas: AWS Compute Optimizer

• Account must be enrolled (opted in) before recommendations appear.
• Recommendations require 14+ days of CloudWatch metric data.
• Enhanced infrastructure metrics (paid) provide 3-month lookback.
• Export jobs write to S3 and are asynchronous.
• Organization enrollment requires management account action.
• Recommendations are resource-type specific with different criteria.

Anti-hallucination rules

1. Always cite resource ARNs, recommendation details, or API responses as evidence.
2. Enrollment is required. Never assume recommendations exist without opt-in.
3. 14 days of data minimum. Never expect instant recommendations.
4. Spend no more than 2 minutes on any single hypothesis. Pivot if inconclusive.

12 runbooks