Unnecessary Multi-AZ Deployment for OpenSearch in Non-Production Environments

Service Category

Databases

Cloud Provider

AWS

Service Name

AWS OpenSearch

Inefficiency Type

Misconfigured Redundancy

Explanation

Non-production OpenSearch domains often inherit Multi-AZ configurations from production setups without clear justification. This leads to redundant replica shards across AZs, inflating both compute and storage costs. Unless strict uptime or fault tolerance requirements exist, most dev/test workloads do not benefit from Multi-AZ redundancy.

Relevant Billing Model

Billed per node-hour and EBS storage; cross-AZ replication adds networking charges; multiple AZs require additional replica nodes.

Detection

Check if OpenSearch domains in non-production environments are configured with multiple Availability Zones
Verify whether replica shard configurations are enabled for test workloads that can tolerate index rebuilds or data loss
Review fault-tolerance and SLA requirements to confirm whether Multi-AZ is warranted
Evaluate whether backups or snapshots already meet data durability needs

Remediation

Reconfigure OpenSearch domains in non-production environments to use single-AZ deployments
Reduce the number of replica shards where appropriate
Implement automated tagging or policy enforcement to prevent accidental Multi-AZ usage in non-prod

Relevant Documentation

Amazon OpenSearch Pricing
Deployment Best Practices

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