Enabling Termination Protection for an Instance

	Note
	The following information applies to instances of Amazon EBS-backed AMIs or Amazon EC2 instance store-backed AMIs.

By default, you can terminate any instances you launch. If you want to prevent accidental termination of the instance, you can enable termination protection for the instance. The instance's DisableApiTermination attribute controls whether the instance is protected. A value of true means the instance is protected and can't be terminated; a value of false means it's not protected and can be terminated. You can specify whether an instance is protected either at launch time or after the instance is running. You can modify this attribute while the instance is running or stopped (for Amazon EBS-backed instances).

AWS Management Console

By default, termination protection is disabled for an instance at launch time.

To enable termination protection for an instance at launch time

In the Request Instances Wizard, select the check box for Termination Protection.

To enable termination protection for an instance after it's launched

In your list of instances, right-click the instance and select Change Termination Protection.
A confirmation dialog box appears with the current status of termination protection.
Click Yes, Enable.
Now the instance cannot be terminated until you disable termination protection.

You can use the same procedure to disable termination protection for the instance. You can enable and disable this attribute of an instance as often as you want.

Command Line Tools

By default, termination protection is disabled for an instance at launch time.

To enable termination protection for an instance at launch time

Add --disable-api-termination to the ec2-run-instances command.

PROMPT>  ec2-run-instances ami_id --disable-api-termination ...

To enable termination protection for an instance after it's launched

View the current value for the attribute with the following command.

PROMPT>  ec2-describe-instance-attribute instance_id --disable-api-termination

Following is a sample response.

disableApiTermination   i-87ad5eec      false

Enable termination protection with the following command.

PROMPT>  ec2-modify-instance-attribute instance_id --disable-api-termination true

Following is a sample response.

disableApiTermination   i-87ad5eec      true

To disable termination protection for an instance

Disable termination protection for the instance with the following command.

PROMPT>  ec2-modify-instance-attribute instance_id --disable-api-termination false

Following is a sample response.

disableApiTermination   i-87ad5eec      false

You can enable and disable this attribute of an instance as often as you want.

API

By default, termination protection is disabled for an instance at launch time.

To enable termination protection for an instance at launch time

Issue a Query request for RunInstances similar to the following example and include DisableApiTermination=true.
```
https://ec2.amazonaws.com/?Action=RunInstances
&ImageId=ami-60a54009
&MaxCount=3
&MinCount=1
&DisableApiTermination=true
&Placement.AvailabilityZone=us-east-1b
&Monitoring.Enabled=true
&AUTHPARAMS
```
For information about the auth parameters, go to Common Query Parameters in the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud API Reference.

To enable termination protection for an instance after it's launched

Issue the following Query request to get the current value of the disableApiTermination attribute.

https://ec2.amazonaws.com/
?Action=DescribeInstanceAttribute
&InstanceId=i-87ad5eec
&Attribute=disableApiTermination
&AUTHPARAMS

Following is an example response.

<DescribeInstanceAttributeResponse xmlns="http://ec2.amazonaws.com/doc/2011-05-15/">
   <requestId>59dbff89-35bd-4eac-99ed-be587EXAMPLE</requestId> 
   <instanceId>i-87ad5eec</instanceId>
   <disableApiTermination>
      <value>false</value>
   </disableApiTermination>
</DescribeInstanceAttributeResponse>

Issue the following Query request to modify the disableApiTermination attribute.

https://ec2.amazonaws.com/
?Action=ModifyInstanceAttribute
&InstanceId=i-87ad5eec
&DisableApiTermination.Value=true
&AUTHPARAMS

Following is an example response.

<ModifyInstanceAttributeResponse xmlns="http://ec2.amazonaws.com/doc/2011-05-15/">
   <requestId>59dbff89-35bd-4eac-99ed-be587EXAMPLE</requestId> 
   <return>true</return>
</ModifyInstanceAttributeResponse>

To disable termination protection for an instance

Issue the following Query request to modify the disableApiTermination attribute.

https://ec2.amazonaws.com/
?Action=ModifyInstanceAttribute
&InstanceId=i-87ad5eec
&DisableApiTermination.Value=false
&AUTHPARAMS

Following is an example response.

<ModifyInstanceAttributeResponse xmlns="http://ec2.amazonaws.com/doc/2011-05-15/">
   <return>true</return>
</ModifyInstanceAttributeResponse>

You can enable and disable this attribute of an instance as often as you want.