Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud
CLI Reference (API Version 2013-02-01)
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ec2-start-instances

Description

Starts an instance that uses an Amazon EBS volume as its root device.

Instances that use Amazon EBS volumes as their root devices can be quickly stopped and started. When an instance is stopped, the compute resources are released and you are not billed for hourly instance usage. However, your root partition Amazon EBS volume remains, continues to persist your data, and you are charged for Amazon EBS volume usage. You can restart your instance at any time. Each time you transition an instance from stopped to started, we charge a full instance hour, even if transitions happen multiple times within a single hour.

Note

Before stopping an instance, make sure it is in a state from which it can be restarted. Stopping an instance does not preserve data stored in RAM.

Performing this operation on an instance that uses an instance store as its root device returns an error.

You cannot start or stop Spot Instances.

For more information, see Using Amazon EBS-Backed AMIs and Instances.

The short version of this command is ec2start.

Syntax

ec2-start-instances instance_id [instance_id...]

Options

NameDescription

instance_id

The instance ID.

Type: String

Default: None

Required: Yes

Example: i-43a4412a

Common Options

OptionDescription

--region REGION

Overrides the region specified by the EC2_URL environment variable and the URL specified by the -U option.

Default: The value of the EC2_URL environment variable, or us-east-1 if EC2_URL isn't set.

Example: --region eu-west-1

-U, --url URL

The uniform resource locator (URL) of the Amazon EC2 web service entry point.

Default: The value of the EC2_URL environment variable, or https://ec2.amazonaws.com if EC2_URL isn't set.

Example: -U https://ec2.amazonaws.com

-K, --private-key EC2-PRIVATE-KEY

The private key that identifies you to Amazon EC2. For more information, see Tell the Tools Who You Are.

Default: The value of the EC2_PRIVATE_KEY environment variable. If EC2_PRIVATE_KEY isn't set, you must specify this option.

Example: -K pk-HKZYKTAIG2ECMXYIBH3HXV4ZBEXAMPLE.pem

-C, --cert EC2-CERT

The X.509 certificate that identifies you to Amazon EC2.

Default: The value of the EC2_CERT environment variable. If EC2_CERT isn't set, you must specify this option.

Example: -C cert-HKZYKTAIG2ECMXYIBH3HXV4ZBEXAMPLE.pem

-O, --aws-access-key AWS_ACCESS_KEY

The access key ID associated with your AWS account. For more information, see Tell the Tools Who You Are.

Default: The value of the AWS_ACCESS_KEY environment variable. If AWS_ACCESS_KEY isn't set, you must specify this option.

Example: -O AKIAIOSFODNN7EXAMPLE

Note

For more information, see the following section, Deprecated Options.

-W, --aws-secret-key AWS_SECRET_KEY

The secret access key associated with your AWS account.

Default: The value of the AWS_SECRET_KEY environment variable. If AWS_SECRET_KEY isn't set, you must specify this option.

Example: -W wJalrXUtnFEMI/K7MDENG/bPxRfiCYEXAMPLEKEY

Note

For more information, see the following section, Deprecated Options.

-T, --security-token TOKEN AWS_DELEGATION_TOKEN

The AWS delegation token.

Default: The value of the environment variable (if set).

--connection-timeout TIMEOUT

The connection timeout, in seconds.

Example: --connection-timeout 30

--request-timeout TIMEOUT

The request timeout, in seconds.

Example: --request-timeout 45

-v, --verbose

Displays verbose output, including the API request and response on the command line. This is useful if you are building tools to talk directly to our Query API.

-H, --headers

Includes column headers in the command output.

--show-empty-fields

Shows empty columns as (nil).

--hide-tags

Omits tags for tagged resources.

--debug

Displays internal debugging information. This can assist us when helping you troubleshooting problems.

-?, --help, -h

Displays usage information for the command.

-

Reads arguments from standard input. This is useful when piping the output from one command to the input of another.

Example: ec2-describe-instances | grep stopped | cut -f 2 | ec2-start-instances -

Deprecated Options

For a limited time, you can still use the private key and X.509 certificate instead of your access key ID and secret access key. However, we recommend that you start using your access key ID (-O, --aws-access-key) and secret access key (-W, --aws-secret-key) now, as the private key (-K, --private-key) and X.509 certificate (-C, --cert) won't be supported after the transition period elapses. For more information, see Tell the Tools Who You Are.

OptionDescription

-K, --private-key EC2-PRIVATE-KEY

The private key to use when constructing requests to Amazon EC2.

Default: The value of the EC2_PRIVATE_KEY environment variable.

Example: -K pk-HKZYKTAIG2ECMXYIBH3HXV4ZBEXAMPLE.pem

-C, --cert EC2-CERT

The X.509 certificate to use when constructing requests to Amazon EC2.

Default: The value of the EC2_CERT environment variable.

Example: -C cert-HKZYKTAIG2ECMXYIBH3HXV4ZBEXAMPLE.pem

Output

This command returns a table that contains the following information:

  • INSTANCE identifier

  • Instance ID

  • The previous state of the instance

  • The new state of the instance

Amazon EC2 command line tools display errors on stderr.

Examples

Example Request

This example starts the i-10a64379 instance.

PROMPT> ec2-start-instances i-10a64379
INSTANCE i-10a64379 stopped pending