Launch Amazon EC2 instances into a host resource group

Dedicated Hosts are also integrated with AWS License Manager. With License Manager, you can create a host resource group, which is a collection of Dedicated Hosts that are managed as a single entity. When creating a host resource group, you specify the host management preferences, such as auto-allocate and auto-release, for the Dedicated Hosts. This allows you to launch instances onto Dedicated Hosts without manually allocating and managing those hosts. For more information, see Host Resource Groups in the AWS License Manager User Guide.

When you launch an instance into a host resource group that has a Dedicated Host with available instance capacity, Amazon EC2 launches the instance onto that host. If the host resource group does not have a host with available instance capacity, Amazon EC2 automatically allocates a new host in the host resource group, and then launches the instance onto that host. For more information, see Host Resource Groups in the AWS License Manager User Guide.

Requirements and limits

• You must associate a core- or socket-based license configuration with the AMI.

• You can't use SQL Server, SUSE, or RHEL AMIs provided by Amazon EC2 with Dedicated Hosts.

• You can't target a specific host by choosing a host ID, and you can't enable instance affinity when launching an instance into a host resource group.

You can launch an instance into a host resource group using the following methods.

Console

To launch an instance into a host resource group

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

2. In the navigation pane, choose Instances, Launch instance.

3. In the Application and OS Images section, select an AMI from the list.

   Note

   SQL Server, SUSE, and RHEL AMIs provided by Amazon EC2 can't be used with Dedicated Hosts.

4. In the Instance type section, select the instance type to launch.

5. In the Key pair section, select the key pair to associate with the instance.

6. In the Advanced details section, do the following:

   1. For Tenancy, select Dedicated Host.

   2. For Target host by, select Host resource group.

   3. For Tenancy host resource group, select the host resource group into which to launch the instance.

   4. For Tenancy affinity, do one of the following:

      • Select Off — The instance launches onto the specified host, but it is not guaranteed to restart on the same Dedicated Host if stopped.

      • Select the Dedicated Host ID — If stopped, the instance always restarts on this specific host.

      For more information about Affinity, see Amazon EC2 Dedicated Host auto-placement and host affinity.

7. Configure the remaining instance options as needed. For more information, see Reference for Amazon EC2 instance configuration parameters.

8. Choose Launch instance.

AWS CLI

To launch an instance into a host resource group

Use the run-instances AWS CLI command, and in the Placement request parameter, omit the Tenancy option and specify the host resource group ARN.

PowerShell

To launch an instance into a host resource group

Use the New-EC2Instance AWS Tools for Windows PowerShell command, and in the Placement request parameter, omit the Tenancy option and specify the host resource group ARN.