Error occurring for Policy Action to delete EC2 Snapshots

Products

• CloudHealth

Issue/Introduction

An error may appear when a Policy Action is failing to delete EC2 Snapshots.

Error message: "Unable to delete snapshot snap-xyz due to: The snapshot is in use."

 

Resolution

If you get a Failed to delete snapshot error indicating that the snapshot is currently in use, it may be due to the snapshot being used by an AMI.  Snapshots that are associated with an AMI cannot be deleted per AWS documentation here:
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/ebs/latest/userguide/ebs-deleting-snapshot.html 

Once you confirm in AWS Console that those snapshots are associated with AMI, you will need to deregister the associated AMI before the Policy Action can delete the snapshot.