Hibernation prerequisites
To hibernate an On-Demand Instance, the following prerequisites must be in place:
Supported Linux AMIs
Must be an HVM AMI that supports hibernation:
AMI | Xen - supported instance families only | Nitro - supported instance families only |
---|---|---|
Amazon Linux 2 AMI released 2019.08.29 or later | Supported | Supported |
Amazon Linux AMI 2018.03 released 2018.11.16 or later | Supported | Supported |
CentOS version 8 AMI ¹ (Additional configuration is required) | Not supported | Supported |
Fedora version 34 or later AMI ¹ (Additional configuration is required) | Not supported | Supported |
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 8 AMI ¹ (Additional configuration is required) | Not supported | Supported |
Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (Focal Fossa) AMI released with serial number 20210820 or later ² |
Supported | Supported |
Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (Bionic Beaver) AMI released with serial number 20190722.1 or later ² | Supported | Supported |
Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) AMI ² ³ (Additional configuration is required) | Supported | Supported |
¹ For CentOS, Fedora, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux, hibernation is supported on Nitro-based instances only.
² We recommend disabling KASLR on instances with Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (Focal Fossa), Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (Bionic Beaver), and Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus). For more information, see Disable KASLR on an instance (Ubuntu only).
³ For the Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) AMI, hibernation is not
supported on t3.nano
instance types. No patch will be made available
because Ubuntu (Xenial Xerus) ended support in April 2021. If you want to use
t3.nano
instance types, we recommend that you upgrade to the Ubuntu
20.04 LTS (Focal Fossa) AMI or the Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (Bionic Beaver) AMI.
To configure your own AMI to support hibernation, see Configure an existing AMI to support hibernation.
Support for other versions of Ubuntu and other operating systems is coming soon.
For information about the supported Windows AMIs, see Supported Windows AMIs in the Amazon EC2 User Guide for Windows Instances.
Supported instance families
-
General purpose: M3, M4, M5, M5a, M5ad, M5d, M6i, M6id, T2, T3, and T3a
-
Compute optimized: C3, C4, C5, C5d, C6i, and C6id
-
Memory optimized: R3, R4, R5, R5a, R5ad, and R5d
-
Storage optimized: I3, and I3en
To see the available instance types that support hibernation in a specific Region
The available instance types vary by Region. To see the available instance types that
support hibernation in a Region, use the describe-instance-types command with the --region
parameter. Include the --filters
parameter to scope the results to the
instance types that support hibernation and the --query
parameter to
scope the output to the value of InstanceType
.
aws ec2 describe-instance-types --filters Name=hibernation-supported,Values=true --query "InstanceTypes[*].[InstanceType]" --output text | sort
Example output
c3.2xlarge
c3.4xlarge
c3.8xlarge
c3.large
c3.xlarge
c4.2xlarge
c4.4xlarge
c4.8xlarge
...
Instance size
Not supported for bare metal instances.
Instance RAM size
Must be less than 150 GB.
Root volume type
Must be an EBS volume, not an instance store volume.
EBS root volume size
Must be large enough to store the RAM contents and accommodate your expected usage, for example, OS or applications. If you enable hibernation, space is allocated on the root volume at launch to store the RAM.
Supported EBS volume types
-
General Purpose SSD (
gp2
andgp3
) -
Provisioned IOPS SSD (
io1
andio2
)
If you choose a Provisioned IOPS SSD volume type, you must provision the EBS volume with the appropriate IOPS to achieve optimum performance for hibernation. For more information, see Amazon EBS volume types.
EBS root volume encryption
To use hibernation, the root volume must be encrypted to ensure the protection of sensitive content that is in memory at the time of hibernation. When RAM data is moved to the EBS root volume, it is always encrypted. Encryption of the root volume is enforced at instance launch.
Use one of the following three options to ensure that the root volume is an encrypted EBS volume:
-
EBS encryption by default – You can enable EBS encryption by default to ensure that all new EBS volumes created in your AWS account are encrypted. This way, you can enable hibernation for your instances without specifying encryption intent at instance launch. For more information, see Encryption by default.
-
EBS "single-step" encryption – You can launch encrypted EBS-backed EC2 instances from an unencrypted AMI and also enable hibernation at the same time. For more information, see Use encryption with EBS-backed AMIs.
-
Encrypted AMI – You can enable EBS encryption by using an encrypted AMI to launch your instance. If your AMI does not have an encrypted root snapshot, you can copy it to a new AMI and request encryption. For more information, see Encrypt an unencrypted image during copy and Copy an AMI.
Enable hibernation at launch
You cannot enable hibernation on an existing instance (running or stopped). For more information, see Enable hibernation for an instance.
Purchasing options
This feature is available for On-Demand Instances, including those that have a Reserved Instance billing discount applied to them. It is not available for Spot Instances. For information about hibernating a Spot Instance, see Hibernate interrupted Spot Instances.