Idle Cloud Memorystore Redis Instance

Explanation

Cloud Memorystore instances that remain idle-i.e., not receiving read or write requests-continue to incur full costs based on provisioned size. In test environments, migration scenarios, or deprecated application components, Redis instances are often left running unintentionally. Since Redis does not autoscale or suspend, unused capacity results in 100% waste until explicitly deleted.

Relevant Billing Model

Billed based on: * Provisioned instance size (memory capacity) Instance tier (Standard or Basic) * Uptime (per second billing). Costs accrue regardless of actual data stored or traffic served.

Detection

• Review memory usage and operation count metrics over a recent period
• Identify instances with zero or near-zero read/write commands
• Check for stale endpoints not referenced in active application code or configuration
• Validate whether the instance serves any production dependencies
• Confirm environment tags (e.g., dev, staging) that may indicate non-critical usage

Remediation

• Decommission idle Redis instances no longer in use
• Consider scaling down instance size if usage is expected to remain minimal
• Use labels to track instance ownership and business purpose for easier future audits
• Establish a periodic review process to catch long-idle memory store resources