Manage your Spot Instances - Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud
Find your Spot InstancesStop a Spot InstanceStart a Spot InstanceTerminate a Spot Instance

Manage your Spot Instances

Amazon EC2 launches a Spot Instance when capacity is available. A Spot Instance runs until it is interrupted or you terminate it yourself.

Find your Spot Instances

A Spot Instance appears in the Instances page in the console, along with On-Demand Instances. Use the following procedure to find your Spot Instances.

Console
To find your Spot Instances using the console

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

  2. In the navigation pane, choose Instances.

  3. To find all Spot Instances, in the search pane, choose Instance lifecycle=spot.

  4. To verify that an instance is a Spot Instance, select the instance, choose the Details tab, and check the value of Lifecycle. The value for a Spot Instance is spot and the value for an On-Demand Instance is normal.

AWS CLI
To find your Spot Instances using the AWS CLI

Use the describe-instances command with the --filters option.

aws ec2 describe-instances \
    --filters "Name=instance-lifecycle,Values=spot"
To determine whether an instance is a Spot Instance

Use the describe-instances command, using the --query option to check the lifecycle value.

aws ec2 describe-instances \
    --instance-ids i-0123a456700123456 \
    --query "Reservations[*].Instances[*].InstanceLifecycle" \
    --output text

If the output is spot, the instance is a Spot Instance. If there is no output, the instance is an On-Demand Instance.

Use the following procedure to find the Spot Instances launched from a specific Spot Instance or Spot Fleet request.

Console
To find the Spot Instances for a request using the console

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

  2. In the navigation pane, choose Spot Requests. The list contains both Spot Instance requests and Spot Fleet requests.

  3. If a Spot Instance request is fulfilled, Capacity is the ID of the Spot Instance. For a Spot Fleet, Capacity indicates how much of the requested capacity has been fulfilled. To view the IDs of the instances in a Spot Fleet, choose the expand arrow, or select the fleet and choose Instances.

  4. For a Spot Fleet, Capacity indicates how much of the requested capacity is fulfilled. To view the IDs of the instances in a Spot Fleet, choose the fleet ID to open its details page and locate the Instances pane.

AWS CLI
To find the Spot Instances for a request using the AWS CLI

Use the describe-spot-instance-requests command with the --query option.

aws ec2 describe-spot-instance-requests \
    --query "SpotInstanceRequests[*].{ID:InstanceId}"

The following is example output:

[
    {
        "ID": "i-1234567890abcdef0"
    },
    {
        "ID": "i-0598c7d356eba48d7"
    }
]

Stop a Spot Instance

If you don’t need your Spot Instances now, but you want to restart them later without losing the data persisted in the Amazon EBS volume, you can stop them. The steps for stopping a Spot Instance are similar to the steps for stopping an On-Demand Instance.

Note

While a Spot Instance is stopped, you can modify some of its instance attributes, but not the instance type.

We don't charge usage for a stopped Spot Instance, or data transfer fees, but we do charge for the storage for any Amazon EBS volumes.

Limitations

  • You can only stop a Spot Instance if the Spot Instance was launched from a persistent Spot Instance request.

  • You can't stop a Spot Instance if the associated Spot Instance request is cancelled. When the Spot Instance request is cancelled, you can only terminate the Spot Instance.

  • You can't stop a Spot Instance if it is part of a fleet or launch group, or Availability Zone group.

Console
To stop a Spot Instance using the console

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

  2. In the navigation pane, choose Instances.

  3. Select the Spot Instance. If you didn't save the instance ID of the Spot Instance, see Find your Spot Instances.

  4. Choose Instance state, Stop instance.

  5. When prompted for confirmation, choose Stop.

AWS CLI
To stop a Spot Instance using the AWS CLI

Use the stop-instances command to manually stop your Spot Instances.

aws ec2 stop-instances --instance-ids i-1234567890abcdef0

Start a Spot Instance

You can start a Spot Instance that you previously stopped.

Prerequisites

You can only start a Spot Instance if:

  • You manually stopped the Spot Instance.

  • The Spot Instance is an EBS-backed instance.

  • Spot Instance capacity is available.

  • The Spot price is lower than your maximum price.

Limitations

  • You can't start a Spot Instance if it is part of fleet or launch group, or Availability Zone group.

The steps for starting a Spot Instance are similar to the steps for starting an On-Demand Instance.

Console
To start a Spot Instance using the console

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

  2. In the navigation pane, choose Instances.

  3. Select the Spot Instance. If you didn't save the instance ID of the Spot Instance, see Find your Spot Instances.

  4. Choose Instance state, Start instance.

AWS CLI
To start a Spot Instance the AWS CLI

Use the start-instances command to manually start your Spot Instances.

aws ec2 start-instances --instance-ids i-1234567890abcdef0

Terminate a Spot Instance

If you terminate a running or stopped Spot Instance that was launched by a persistent Spot Instance request, the Spot Instance request transitions to the open state so that a new Spot Instance can be launched. To ensure that no new Spot Instance is launched, you must first cancel the Spot Instance request.

If you cancel an active Spot Instance request that has a running Spot Instance, the running Spot Instance is not automatically terminated; you must manually terminate the Spot Instance.

If you cancel a disabled Spot Instance request that has a stopped Spot Instance, the stopped Spot Instance is automatically terminated by the Amazon EC2 Spot service. There might be a short lag between when you cancel the Spot Instance request and when the Spot service terminates the Spot Instance.

For more information, see Cancel a Spot Instance request.

Console
To manually terminate a Spot Instance using the console

  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 Spot Instance. If you didn't save the instance ID of the Spot Instance, see Find your Spot Instances.

  5. Choose Instance state, Terminate instance.

  6. Choose Terminate when prompted for confirmation.

AWS CLI
To manually terminate a Spot Instance using the AWS CLI

Use the terminate-instances command to manually terminate your Spot Instances.

aws ec2 terminate-instances --instance-ids i-1234567890abcdef0 i-0598c7d356eba48d7