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StopInstances

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StopInstances - Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud

Stops an Amazon EBS-backed instance. For more information, see Stop and start Amazon EC2 instances in the Amazon EC2 User Guide.

You can use the Stop operation together with the Hibernate parameter to hibernate an instance if the instance is enabled for hibernation and meets the hibernation prerequisites. For more information, see Hibernate your Amazon EC2 instance in the Amazon EC2 User Guide.

When you stop or hibernate an instance, we shut it down. You can restart your instance at any time. Before stopping or hibernating an instance, make sure it's in a state from which it can be restarted. Stopping an instance doesn't preserve data stored in RAM, while hibernation does. If hibernation fails, a normal shutdown occurs.

If your instance appears stuck in the stopping state, there might be an issue with the underlying host computer. You can use the Stop operation together with the Force parameter to force stop your instance. For more information, see Troubleshoot Amazon EC2 instance stop issues in the Amazon EC2 User Guide.

Stopping and hibernating an instance differs from rebooting or terminating it. For example, a stopped or hibernated instance retains its root volume and any data volumes, unlike terminated instances where these volumes are automatically deleted. For more information about the differences between stopping, hibernating, rebooting, and terminating instances, see Amazon EC2 instance state changes in the Amazon EC2 User Guide.

We don't charge for instance usage or data transfer fees when an instance is stopped. However, the root volume and any data volumes remain and continue to persist your data, and you're charged for volume usage. Every time you start your instance, Amazon EC2 charges a one-minute minimum for instance usage, followed by per-second billing.

You can't stop or hibernate instance store-backed instances.

Request Parameters

The following parameters are for this specific action. For more information about required and optional parameters that are common to all actions, see Common Query Parameters.

DryRun

Checks whether you have the required permissions for the operation, without actually making the request, and provides an error response. If you have the required permissions, the error response is DryRunOperation. Otherwise, it is UnauthorizedOperation.

Type: Boolean

Required: No

Force

Forces the instance to stop. The instance will first attempt a graceful shutdown, which includes flushing file system caches and metadata. If the graceful shutdown fails to complete within the timeout period, the instance shuts down forcibly without flushing the file system caches and metadata.

After using this option, you must perform file system check and repair procedures. This option is not recommended for Windows instances. For more information, see Troubleshoot Amazon EC2 instance stop issues in the Amazon EC2 User Guide.

Default: false

Type: Boolean

Required: No

Hibernate

Hibernates the instance if the instance was enabled for hibernation at launch. If the instance cannot hibernate successfully, a normal shutdown occurs. For more information, see Hibernate your instance in the Amazon EC2 User Guide.

Default: false

Type: Boolean

Required: No

InstanceId.N

The IDs of the instances.

Type: Array of strings

Required: Yes

Response Elements

The following elements are returned by the service.

instancesSet

Information about the stopped instances.

Type: Array of InstanceStateChange objects

requestId

The ID of the request.

Type: String

Errors

For information about the errors that are common to all actions, see Common client error codes.

Examples

Example

This example stops the specified instance.

Sample Request

https://ec2.amazonaws.com/?Action=StopInstances &InstanceId.1=i-1234567890abcdef0 &AUTHPARAMS

Sample Response

<StopInstancesResponse xmlns="http://ec2.amazonaws.com/doc/2016-11-15/"> <requestId>59dbff89-35bd-4eac-99ed-be587EXAMPLE</requestId> <instancesSet> <item> <instanceId>i-1234567890abcdef0</instanceId> <currentState> <code>64</code> <name>stopping</name> </currentState> <previousState> <code>16</code> <name>running</name> </previousState> </item> </instancesSet> </StopInstancesResponse>

See Also

For more information about using this API in one of the language-specific AWS SDKs, see the following:

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