Terminate your instance

You can delete your instance when you no longer need it. This is referred to as terminating your instance. As soon as the state of an instance changes to shutting-down or terminated, you stop incurring charges for that instance.

You can't connect to or start an instance after you've terminated it. However, you can launch additional instances using the same AMI. If you'd rather stop and start your instance, or hibernate it, see Stop and start your instance or Hibernate your On-Demand Instance or Spot Instance. For more information, see Differences between reboot, stop, hibernate, and terminate.

Instance termination

After you terminate an instance, it remains visible in the console for a short while, and then the entry is automatically deleted. You cannot delete the terminated instance entry yourself. After an instance is terminated, resources such as tags and volumes are gradually disassociated from the instance and may no longer be visible on the terminated instance after a short while.

When an instance terminates, the data on any instance store volumes associated with that instance is deleted.

By default, Amazon EBS root device volumes are automatically deleted when the instance terminates. However, by default, any additional EBS volumes that you attach at launch, or any EBS volumes that you attach to an existing instance persist even after the instance terminates. This behavior is controlled by the volume's DeleteOnTermination attribute, which you can modify. For more information, see Preserve Amazon EBS volumes on instance termination.

You can prevent an instance from being terminated accidentally by someone using the AWS Management Console, the CLI, and the API. This feature is available for both Amazon EC2 instance store-backed and Amazon EBS-backed instances. Each instance has a DisableApiTermination attribute with the default value of false (the instance can be terminated through Amazon EC2). You can modify this instance attribute while the instance is running or stopped (in the case of Amazon EBS-backed instances). For more information, see Enable termination protection.

You can control whether an instance should stop or terminate when shutdown is initiated from the instance using an operating system command for system shutdown. For more information, see Change the instance initiated shutdown behavior.

If you run a script on instance termination, your instance might have an abnormal termination, because we have no way to ensure that shutdown scripts run. Amazon EC2 attempts to shut an instance down cleanly and run any system shutdown scripts; however, certain events (such as hardware failure) may prevent these system shutdown scripts from running.

Terminating multiple instances with termination protection across Availability Zones

If you terminate multiple instances across multiple Availability Zones, and one or more of the specified instances are enabled for termination protection, the request fails with the following results:

• The specified instances that are in the same Availability Zone as the protected instance are not terminated.

• The specified instances that are in different Availability Zones, where no other specified instances are protected, are successfully terminated.

For example, say you have the following instances:

Instance	Availability Zone	Terminate protection
Instance A	us-east-1a	Disabled
Instance B		Disabled
Instance C	us-east-1b	Enabled
Instance D		Disabled

If you attempt to terminate all of these instances in the same request, the request reports failure with the following results:

• Instance A and Instance B are successfully terminated because none of the specified instances in us-east-1a are enabled for termination protection.

• Instance C and Instance D fail to terminate because at least one of the specified instances in us-east-1b (Instance C) is enabled for termination protection.

What happens when you terminate an instance

When an EC2 instance is terminated using the terminate-instances command, the following is registered at the OS level:

• The API request will send a button press event to the guest.

• Various system services will be stopped as a result of the button press event. systemd handles a graceful shutdown of the system. Graceful shutdown is triggered by the ACPI shutdown button press event from the hypervisor.

• ACPI shutdown will be initiated.

• The instance will shut down when the graceful shutdown process exits. There is no configurable OS shutdown time.

Terminate an instance

You can terminate an instance using the AWS Management Console or the command line.

By default, when you initiate a shutdown from an Amazon EBS-backed instance (using the shutdown or poweroff commands), the instance stops. You can change the default shutdown behavior so that the instance terminates. The halt command does not initiate a shutdown. If used, the instance does not terminate; instead, it places the CPU into HLT and the instance remains running.

Console

To terminate an instance

1. Before you terminate an instance, verify that you won't lose any data by checking that your Amazon EBS volumes won't be deleted on termination and that you've copied any data that you need from your instance store volumes to persistent storage, such as Amazon EBS or Amazon S3.

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

3. In the navigation pane, choose Instances.

4. Select the instance, and choose Instance state, Terminate instance.

5. Choose Terminate when prompted for confirmation.

Command line

To terminate an instance

You can use one of the following commands. For more information about these command line interfaces, see Access Amazon EC2.

• terminate-instances (AWS CLI)

• Remove-EC2Instance (AWS Tools for Windows PowerShell)

To run a controlled fault injection experiment

You can use AWS Fault Injection Simulator to test how your application responds when your instance is terminated. For more information, see the AWS Fault Injection Simulator User Guide.

Enable termination protection

By default, you can terminate your instance using the Amazon EC2 console, command line interface, or API. To prevent your instance from being accidentally terminated using Amazon EC2, you can enable termination protection for the instance. The DisableApiTermination attribute controls whether the instance can be terminated using the console, CLI, or API. By default, termination protection is disabled for your instance. You can set the value of this attribute when you launch the instance, while the instance is running, or while the instance is stopped (for Amazon EBS-backed instances).

The DisableApiTermination attribute does not prevent you from terminating an instance by initiating shutdown from the instance (using an operating system command for system shutdown) when the InstanceInitiatedShutdownBehavior attribute is set. For more information, see Change the instance initiated shutdown behavior.

Limitations

You can't enable termination protection for Spot Instances—a Spot Instance is terminated when the Spot price exceeds the amount you're willing to pay for Spot Instances. However, you can prepare your application to handle Spot Instance interruptions. For more information, see Spot Instance interruptions.

The DisableApiTermination attribute does not prevent Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling from terminating an instance. For instances in an Auto Scaling group, use the following Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling features instead of Amazon EC2 termination protection:

• To prevent instances that are part of an Auto Scaling group from terminating on scale in, use instance scale-in protection. For more information, see Using instance scale-in protection in the Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling User Guide.

• To prevent Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling from terminating unhealthy instances, suspend the ReplaceUnhealthy process. For more information, see Suspending and Resuming Scaling Processes in the Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling User Guide.

• To specify which instances Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling should terminate first, choose a termination policy. For more information, see Customizing the Termination Policy in the Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling User Guide.

To enable termination protection for an instance at launch time

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

2. On the dashboard, choose Launch Instance and follow the directions in the wizard.

3. On the Configure Instance Details page, select the Enable termination protection check box.

To enable termination protection for a running or stopped instance

1. Select the instance, and choose Actions, Instance Settings, Change Termination Protection.

2. Choose Yes, Enable.

To disable termination protection for a running or stopped instance

1. Select the instance, and choose Actions, Instance Settings, Change Termination Protection.

2. Choose Yes, Disable.

To enable or disable termination protection using the command line

You can use one of the following commands. For more information about these command line interfaces, see Access Amazon EC2.

• modify-instance-attribute (AWS CLI)

• Edit-EC2InstanceAttribute (AWS Tools for Windows PowerShell)

Change the instance initiated shutdown behavior

When you initiate a shutdown from an Amazon EBS-backed instance (using a command such as shutdown or poweroff), the instance stops by default. You can change this behavior so that the instance terminates instead by changing the InstanceInitiatedShutdownBehavior attribute for the instance. You can change this attribute while the instance is running or stopped. (Note that halt does not issue a poweroff command and, if used, the instance does not shutdown; instead, it places the CPU into HLT and the instance remains running.)

The InstanceInitiatedShutdownBehavior attribute only applies when you perform a shutdown from the operating system of the instance itself. It does not apply when you stop an instance using the StopInstances API or the Amazon EC2 console.

You can change the InstanceInitiatedShutdownBehavior attribute using the Amazon EC2 console or the command line.

Console

To change the instance initiated shutdown behavior

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

2. In the navigation pane, choose Instances.

3. Select the instance.

4. Choose Actions, Instance settings, Change shutdown behavior.

   Shutdown behavior displays the current behavior.

5. To change the behavior, for Shutdown behavior, choose Stop or Terminate, and then choose Save.

Command line

To change the instance initiated shutdown behavior

You can use one of the following commands. For more information about these command line interfaces, see Access Amazon EC2.

• modify-instance-attribute (AWS CLI)

• Edit-EC2InstanceAttribute (AWS Tools for Windows PowerShell)

Preserve Amazon EBS volumes on instance termination

When an instance terminates, Amazon EC2 uses the value of the DeleteOnTermination attribute for each attached Amazon EBS volume to determine whether to preserve or delete the volume.

The default value for the DeleteOnTermination attribute differs depending on whether the volume is the root volume of the instance or a non-root volume attached to the instance.

Root volume

By default, the DeleteOnTermination attribute for the root volume of an instance is set to true. Therefore, the default is to delete the root volume of the instance when the instance terminates. The DeleteOnTermination attribute can be set by the creator of an AMI as well as by the person who launches an instance. When the attribute is changed by the creator of an AMI or by the person who launches an instance, the new setting overrides the original AMI default setting. We recommend that you verify the default setting for the DeleteOnTermination attribute after you launch an instance with an AMI.

Non-root volume

By default, when you attach a non-root EBS volume to an instance, its DeleteOnTermination attribute is set to false. Therefore, the default is to preserve these volumes. After the instance terminates, you can take a snapshot of the preserved volume or attach it to another instance. You must delete a volume to avoid incurring further charges. For more information, see Delete an Amazon EBS volume.

To verify the value of the DeleteOnTermination attribute for an EBS volume that is in use, look at the instance's block device mapping. For more information, see View the EBS volumes in an instance block device mapping.

You can change the value of the DeleteOnTermination attribute for a volume when you launch the instance or while the instance is running.

Examples

• Change the root volume to persist at launch using the console
• Change the root volume to persist at launch using the command line
• Change the root volume of a running instance to persist using the command line

Change the root volume to persist at launch using the console

Using the console, you can change the DeleteOnTermination attribute when you launch an instance. To change this attribute for a running instance, you must use the command line.

To change the root volume of an instance to persist at launch using the console

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

2. From the console dashboard, select Launch Instance.

3. On the Choose an Amazon Machine Image (AMI) page, choose an AMI and choose Select.

4. Follow the wizard to complete the Choose an Instance Type and Configure Instance Details pages.

5. On the Add Storage page, deselect the Delete On Termination check box for the root volume.

6. Complete the remaining wizard pages, and then choose Launch.

In the new console experience, you can verify the setting by viewing details for the root device volume on the instance's details pane. On the Storage tab, under Block devices, scroll right to view the Delete on termination setting for the volume. By default, Delete on termination is Yes. If you change the default behavior, Delete on termination is No.

In the old console experience, you can verify the setting by viewing details for the root device volume on the instance's details pane. Next to Block devices, choose the entry for the root device volume. By default, Delete on termination is True. If you change the default behavior, Delete on termination is False.

Change the root volume to persist at launch using the command line

When you launch an EBS-backed instance, you can use one of the following commands to change the root device volume to persist. For more information about these command line interfaces, see Access Amazon EC2.

• run-instances (AWS CLI)

• New-EC2Instance (AWS Tools for Windows PowerShell)

In the block device mappings for the volumes that you want to persist, include --DeleteOnTermination, and specify false.

For example, to persist a volume add the following option to your run-instances command:

--block-device-mappings file://mapping.json

In mapping.json, specify the device name, for example /dev/sda1 or /dev/xvda, and for --DeleteOnTermination, specify false.

[
  {
    "DeviceName": "device_name",
    "Ebs": {
      "DeleteOnTermination": false
    }
  }
]

Change the root volume of a running instance to persist using the command line

You can use one of the following commands to change the root device volume of a running EBS-backed instance to persist. For more information about these command line interfaces, see Access Amazon EC2.

• modify-instance-attribute (AWS CLI)

• Edit-EC2InstanceAttribute (AWS Tools for Windows PowerShell)

For example, use the following command:

aws ec2 modify-instance-attribute --instance-id i-1234567890abcdef0 --block-device-mappings file://mapping.json

In mapping.json, specify the device name, for example /dev/sda1 or /dev/xvda, and for --DeleteOnTermination, specify false.

[
  {
    "DeviceName": "device_name",
    "Ebs": {
      "DeleteOnTermination": false
    }
  }
]

Troubleshoot instance termination

If you terminate your instance and another instance starts, most likely you have configured automatic scaling through a feature like EC2 Fleet or Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling.

If your instance is in the shutting-down state for longer than usual, it should be cleaned up (terminated) by automated processes within the Amazon EC2 service. For more information, see Delayed instance termination.