Delete your Auto Scaling infrastructure

To completely delete your scaling infrastructure, complete the following tasks.

Delete your Auto Scaling group

When you delete an Auto Scaling group, its desired, minimum, and maximum values are set to 0. As a result, the instances are terminated. Deleting an instance also deletes any associated logs or data, and any volumes on the instance. If you do not want to terminate one or more instances, you can detach them before you delete the Auto Scaling group. If the group has scaling policies, deleting the group deletes the policies, the underlying alarm actions, and any alarm that no longer has an associated action.

To delete your Auto Scaling group (console)

1. Open the Amazon EC2 console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/ec2/, and choose Auto Scaling Groups from the navigation pane.

2. Select the check box next to your Auto Scaling group and choose Actions, Delete.

3. When prompted for confirmation, type delete to confirm deleting the specified Auto Scaling group and then choose Delete.

   A loading icon in the Name column indicates that the Auto Scaling group is being deleted. The Desired, Min, and Max columns show 0 instances for the Auto Scaling group. It takes a few minutes to terminate the instance and delete the group. Refresh the list to see the current state.

To delete your Auto Scaling group (AWS CLI)

Use the following delete-auto-scaling-group command to delete the Auto Scaling group. This operation does not work if the group has any EC2 instances; it is for group's with zero instances only.

aws autoscaling delete-auto-scaling-group --auto-scaling-group-name my-asg

If the group has instances or scaling activities in progress, use the delete-auto-scaling-group command with the --force-delete option. This will also terminate the EC2 instances. When you delete an Auto Scaling group from the Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling console, the console uses this operation to terminate any EC2 instances and delete the group at the same time.

aws autoscaling delete-auto-scaling-group --auto-scaling-group-name my-asg --force-delete

(Optional) Delete the launch configuration

You can skip this step to keep the launch configuration for future use.

To delete the launch configuration (console)

1. Open the Amazon EC2 console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/ec2/.

2. On the left navigation pane, under Auto Scaling, choose Auto Scaling Groups.

3. Choose Launch configurations near the top of the page. When prompted for confirmation, choose View launch configurations to confirm that you want to view the Launch configurations page.

4. Select your launch configuration and choose Actions, Delete launch configuration.

5. When prompted for confirmation, choose Delete.

To delete the launch configuration (AWS CLI)

Use the following delete-launch-configuration command.

aws autoscaling delete-launch-configuration --launch-configuration-name my-launch-config

(Optional) Delete the launch template

You can delete your launch template or just one version of your launch template. When you delete a launch template, all its versions are deleted.

You can skip this step to keep the launch template for future use.

To delete your launch template (console)

1. Open the Amazon EC2 console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/ec2/.

2. On the navigation pane, under Instances, choose Launch Templates.

3. Select your launch template and then do one of the following:

   • Choose Actions, Delete template. When prompted for confirmation, type Delete to confirm deleting the specified launch template and then choose Delete.

   • Choose Actions, Delete template version. Select the version to delete and choose Delete.

To delete the launch template (AWS CLI)

Use the following delete-launch-template command to delete your template and all its versions.

aws ec2 delete-launch-template --launch-template-id lt-068f72b72934aff71

Alternatively, you can use the delete-launch-template-versions command to delete a specific version of a launch template.

aws ec2 delete-launch-template-versions --launch-template-id lt-068f72b72934aff71 --versions 1

(Optional) Delete the load balancer and target groups

Skip this step if your Auto Scaling group is not associated with an Elastic Load Balancing load balancer, or if you want to keep the load balancer for future use.

To delete your load balancer (console)

1. Open the Amazon EC2 console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/ec2/.

2. On the navigation pane, under Load Balancing, choose Load Balancers.

3. Choose the load balancer and choose Actions, Delete.

4. When prompted for confirmation, choose Yes, Delete.

To delete your target group (console)

1. On the navigation pane, under Load Balancing, choose Target Groups.

2. Choose the target group and choose Actions, Delete.

3. When prompted for confirmation, choose Yes, Delete.

To delete the load balancer associated with the Auto Scaling group (AWS CLI)

For Application Load Balancers and Network Load Balancers, use the following delete-load-balancer and delete-target-group commands.

aws elbv2 delete-load-balancer --load-balancer-arn my-load-balancer-arn
aws elbv2 delete-target-group --target-group-arn my-target-group-arn

For Classic Load Balancers, use the following delete-load-balancer command.

aws elb delete-load-balancer --load-balancer-name my-load-balancer

(Optional) Delete CloudWatch alarms

To delete the CloudWatch alarms associated with your Auto Scaling group, complete the following steps. For example, you might have alarms associated with step scaling or simple scaling policies.

Note

Deleting an Auto Scaling group automatically deletes the CloudWatch alarms that Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling manages for a target tracking scaling policy.

You can skip this step if your Auto Scaling group is not associated with any CloudWatch alarms, or if you want to keep the alarms for future use.

To delete the CloudWatch alarms (console)

1. Open the CloudWatch console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/cloudwatch/.

2. On the navigation pane, choose Alarms.

3. Choose the alarms and choose Action, Delete.

4. When prompted for confirmation, choose Delete.

To delete the CloudWatch alarms (AWS CLI)

Use the delete-alarms command. You can delete one or more alarms at a time. For example, use the following command to delete the Step-Scaling-AlarmHigh-AddCapacity and Step-Scaling-AlarmLow-RemoveCapacity alarms.

aws cloudwatch delete-alarms --alarm-name Step-Scaling-AlarmHigh-AddCapacity Step-Scaling-AlarmLow-RemoveCapacity