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In this lesson we cover AWS Trusted Advisor — a continuous auditing service that inspects your AWS environment and delivers real-time, actionable recommendations based on AWS best practices. AWS Trusted Advisor evaluates resources across five core categories: cost optimization, security, fault tolerance (reliability), performance, and service quotas. Its guidance helps you reduce costs, improve security posture, boost resiliency, and avoid hitting service limits. What Trusted Advisor does:
  • Scans your account configuration and resource usage.
  • Flags issues and prioritizes recommendations.
  • Provides links to the AWS Management Console to help you remediate issues quickly.
  • Exports results for reporting and tracking.
For a quick conceptual example: Trusted Advisor can analyze an EC2 instance inside a VPC, inspect its security groups and network configuration, and recommend changes to tighten permissions or resolve misconfigurations.
A simple AWS diagram showing an Amazon EC2 instance in a VPC being evaluated by AWS Trusted Advisor and then placed into a security group inside another VPC. The image conveys implementing security group rules to enhance network security.
Practical recommendations Trusted Advisor might provide for EC2 and networking:
  • Tighten overly permissive security group rules (for example, remove 0.0.0.0/0 where not required).
  • Identify and remove unused Elastic IP addresses to avoid charges.
  • Suggest better instance sizing or purchasing options (Reserved Instances / Savings Plans) to match workload needs.
Trusted Advisor also inspects Amazon S3 usage patterns and can recommend lifecycle policies to transition objects to cheaper storage tiers (for example, S3 Glacier or S3 Glacier Deep Archive) or to expire objects that are no longer needed. These changes reduce storage costs by preventing data from remaining in higher-cost storage classes indefinitely.
A slide titled "Trusted Advisor" showing Amazon S3 bucket icons on the left and right connected through an AWS Trusted Advisor icon. Below is a note to enable lifecycle policies for data archiving and cost reduction.
Key benefits at a glance
An infographic slide titled "Benefits" with five vertical panels labeled Cost Optimization, Performance, Security, Fault Tolerance, and Service Quotas, each showing a colorful icon and a short description. It summarizes the key advantages of a cloud/service management offering.
Additional technical details and best practices
  • Checks and coverage: Trusted Advisor organizes its checks into the five categories above and reports results as flagged resources with recommended actions.
  • Support levels: Some checks are available to all AWS customers. The fuller, more detailed set of checks requires a Business or Enterprise support plan.
  • Integrations: Recommendations often include direct links to the AWS Management Console for remediation. Results are exportable for compliance, tracking, and reporting.
  • Alerts and quotas: Trusted Advisor can alert you when resource usage approaches typical thresholds (for example, around 80% of a service quota), giving you time to request increases or remediate.
Exam tip: If a question asks which AWS service provides prescriptive recommendations to improve cost, security, performance, or reliability (and monitors service quotas), the answer is AWS Trusted Advisor. Remember that a more complete set of checks is available with Business/Enterprise support plans.
References and further reading

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