EC2 Instance Scheduler

Question

I would like to ask what kind of automatic tools exist there to start an instance of Amazon EC2 at 08:00 and stop it at 16:00 (And where to start it?)

Answer 1

At the company I work for, clients regularly asked about this, so we wrote a free EC2 planning application, available here:

http://blog.simple-help.com/2012/03/free-ec2-scheduler/

It works on Windows and Mac, allows you to create several daily / weekly / monthly schedules and allows you to use the appropriate filters to turn on a large number of instances easily or includes those that you add in the future.

Answer 2

I run my instances through a service called Scalarium - she has this auto-timed. :)

Answer 3

To close the servers, you can simply schedule a task on the server (s) to inform him of the completion of work at 16:00.

However, if you use the Amazon EC2 command-line tools, you can run commands from your workstation to start and stop instances:

• http://docs.amazonwebservices.com/AWSEC2/latest/CommandLineReference/index.html?ApiReference-cmd-RunInstances.html

To configure the command-line tools on your Mac / Linux workstation, the following guides may be helpful:

• http://www.robertsosinski.com/2008/01/26/starting-amazon-ec2-with-mac-os-x/
• http://cloud-computing.learningtree.com/2010/09/28/using-the-amazon-ec2-command-line-tools-and-api/

You can even configure these commands to run when loading a workstation or scheduling them on your workstation.

Answer 4

Amazon does not offer any features to support this.

The preferred solution (currently) is to run the cron task from an existing server .

Answer 5

I am not sure what is, but I believe that many people are interested in such a product. I really have a product that does the opposite of what you need - it stops the machine after a given amount of time ;-). I assume that you want to save EC2 $$$ by running your instances only in the daytime. If this is the case, then I believe that my existing product can be easily twisted to meet your needs.

Answer 6

You can do this by running the task in another instance that runs 24/7, or you can use a third-party service such as Ylastic or Rocket Rush .

If you want to configure it yourself, for example, in C # the code for stopping the server is quite simple:

public void stopInstance (line instance_id, line AWSRegion) {RegionEndpoint myAWSRegion = RegionEndpoint.GetBySystemName (AWSRegion); AmazonEC2 ec2 = AWSClientFactory.CreateAmazonEC2Client (AWSAccessKey, AWSSecretKey, myAWSRegion); ec2.StopInstances (new StopInstancesRequest (). WithInstanceId (instance_id)); }