10/16/2018 Stop and Start Your Instance - Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud

AWS Documentation (/index.html) » Amazon EC2 (/ec2/index.html) » User Guide for Linux Instances (index.html)
» Amazon EC2 Instances (Instances.html) » Instance Lifecycle (ec2-instance-lifecycle.html) » Stop and Start Your
Instance

Stop and Start Your Instance

You can stop and restart your instance if it has an Amazon EBS volume as its root
device. The instance retains its instance ID, but can change as described in the
Overview (Stop_Start.html#instance_stop) section.

When you stop an instance, we shut it down. We don't charge usage for a stopped
instance, or data transfer fees, but we do charge for the storage for any Amazon
EBS volumes. Each time you start a stopped instance we charge a minimum of
one minute for usage. After one minute, we charge only for the seconds you use.
For example, if you run an instance for 20 seconds and then stop it, we charge for
a full one minute. If you run an instance for 3 minutes and 40 seconds, we charge
for exactly 3 minutes and 40 seconds of usage.

While the instance is stopped, you can treat its root volume like any other volume,
and modify it (for example, repair le system problems or update software). You
just detach the volume from the stopped instance, attach it to a running instance,
make your changes, detach it from the running instance, and then reattach it to
the stopped instance. Make sure that you reattach it using the storage device
name that's speci ed as the root device in the block device mapping for the
instance.

If you decide that you no longer need an instance, you can terminate it. As soon as
the state of an instance changes to shutting-down or terminated, we stop
charging for that instance. For more information, see Terminate Your Instance
(terminating-instances.html) .

Contents

Overview (#instance_stop)
Stopping and Starting Your Instances (#starting-stopping-instances)
Modifying a Stopped Instance
(#Using_ChangingAttributesWhileInstanceStopped)
Troubleshooting (#troubleshoot-instance-stop)

Overview

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You can only stop an Amazon EBS-backed instance. To verify the root device type
of your instance, describe the instance and check whether the device type of its
root volume is ebs (Amazon EBS-backed instance) or instance store (instance
store-backed instance). For more information, see Determining the Root Device
Type of Your AMI (ComponentsAMIs.html#display-ami-root-device-type) .

When you stop a running instance, the following happens:

The instance performs a normal shutdown and stops running; its status
changes to stopping and then stopped.
Any Amazon EBS volumes remain attached to the instance, and their data
persists.
Any data stored in the RAM of the host computer or the instance store
volumes of the host computer is gone.
In most cases, the instance is migrated to a new underlying host computer
when it's started.
The instance retains its private IPv4 addresses and any IPv6 addresses when
stopped and restarted. We release the public IPv4 address and assign a new
one when you restart it.
The instance retains its associated Elastic IP addresses. You're charged for
any Elastic IP addresses associated with a stopped instance.
When you stop and start a Windows instance, the EC2Con g service
performs tasks on the instance, such as changing the drive letters for any
attached Amazon EBS volumes. For more information about these defaults
and how you can change them, see Con guring a Windows Instance Using
the EC2Con g Service
(https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/WindowsGuide/ec2con g-
service.html) in the Amazon EC2 User Guide for Windows Instances.
If your instance is in an Auto Scaling group, the Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling
service marks the stopped instance as unhealthy, and may terminate it and
launch a replacement instance. For more information, see Health Checks for
Auto Scaling Instances
(https://docs.aws.amazon.com/autoscaling/latest/userguide/healthcheck.html) in
the Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling User Guide.
When you stop a ClassicLink instance, it's unlinked from the VPC to which it
was linked. You must link the instance to the VPC again after restarting it.
For more information about ClassicLink, see ClassicLink (vpc-classiclink.html) .

For more information, see Di erences Between Reboot, Stop, and Terminate (ec2-
instance-lifecycle.html#lifecycle-di erences) .

You can modify the following attributes of an instance only when it is stopped:

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Instance type
User data
Kernel
RAM disk

If you try to modify these attributes while the instance is running, Amazon EC2
returns the IncorrectInstanceState error.

Stopping and Starting Your Instances

You can start and stop your Amazon EBS-backed instance using the console or the
command line.

By default, when you initiate a shutdown from an Amazon EBS-backed instance

(using the shutdown or powero command), the instance stops. You can change
this behavior so that it terminates instead. For more information, see Changing
the Instance Initiated Shutdown Behavior (terminating-
instances.html#Using_ChangingInstanceInitiatedShutdownBehavior) .

To stop and start an Amazon EBS-backed instance using the console

1. In the navigation pane, choose Instances, and select the instance.

2. Choose Actions, select Instance State, and then choose Stop. If Stop is
disabled, either the instance is already stopped or its root device is an
instance store volume.

Warning

When you stop an instance, the data on any instance store

volumes is erased. Therefore, if you have any data on instance
store volumes that you want to keep, be sure to back it up to
persistent storage.

3. In the con rmation dialog box, choose Yes, Stop. It can take a few minutes
for the instance to stop.

4. While your instance is stopped, you can modify certain instance attributes.
For more information, see Modifying a Stopped Instance
(Stop_Start.html#Using_ChangingAttributesWhileInstanceStopped) .

5. To restart the stopped instance, select the instance, and choose Actions,
Instance State, Start.

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6. In the con rmation dialog box, choose Yes, Start. It can take a few minutes
for the instance to enter the running state.

To stop and start an Amazon EBS-backed instance using the command line

You can use one of the following commands. For more information about these
command line interfaces, see Accessing Amazon EC2 (concepts.html#access-ec2) .

stop-instances (https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cli/latest/reference/ec2/stop-
instances.html) and start-instances
(https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cli/latest/reference/ec2/start-instances.html) (AWS
CLI)
Stop-EC2Instance
(https://docs.aws.amazon.com/powershell/latest/reference/items/Stop-
EC2Instance.html) and Start-EC2Instance
(https://docs.aws.amazon.com/powershell/latest/reference/items/Start-
EC2Instance.html) (AWS Tools for Windows PowerShell)

Modifying a Stopped Instance

You can change the instance type, user data, and EBS-optimization attributes of a
stopped instance using the AWS Management Console or the command line
interface. You can't use the AWS Management Console to modify the
DeleteOnTermination, kernel, or RAM disk attributes.

To modify an instance attribute

To change the instance type, see Changing the Instance Type (ec2-instance-
resize.html) .
To change the user data for your instance, see Working with Instance User
Data (ec2-instance-metadata.html#instancedata-add-user-data) .
To enable or disable EBS–optimization for your instance, see Modifying EBS–
Optimization (EBSOptimized.html#modify-ebs-optimized-attribute) .
To change the DeleteOnTermination attribute of the root volume for your
instance, see Updating the Block Device Mapping of a Running Instance
(block-device-mapping-concepts.html#update-instance-bdm) .

To modify an instance attribute using the command line

You can use one of the following commands. For more information about these
command line interfaces, see Accessing Amazon EC2 (concepts.html#access-ec2) .

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modify-instance-attribute
(https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cli/latest/reference/ec2/modify-instance-
attribute.html) (AWS CLI)
Edit-EC2InstanceAttribute
(https://docs.aws.amazon.com/powershell/latest/reference/items/Edit-
EC2InstanceAttribute.html) (AWS Tools for Windows PowerShell)

Troubleshooting

If you have stopped your Amazon EBS-backed instance and it appears "stuck" in
the stopping state, you can forcibly stop it. For more information, see
Troubleshooting Stopping Your Instance (TroubleshootingInstancesStopping.html) .

© 2018, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its a liates. All rights reserved.

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