Stop, Start, Terminate (Learn AWS)

An instance moves through a few states. Each change has rules about the bill, the disk and the addresses.

pending, runningbooting, then serving; billed by the hour

stopping, stoppedoff; the disk is kept and billed, the compute is not

shutting-down, terminatedgone; the disk is deleted with it

Where an instance can be

Stop and start

aws ec2 stop-instances --instance-ids $ID

Stop is a clean shutdown. The disk and everything on it stay, as does the private IP, and you stop paying for compute. The disk is still billed.

aws ec2 start-instances --instance-ids $ID

Start boots it again from the same disk. One thing changes: the public IP. It was borrowed from AWS's pool, went back when the instance stopped, and a new one comes with the start. Anything that remembered the old address now points at nothing.

Terminate

aws ec2 terminate-instances --instance-ids $ID

Terminate ends the instance: it shuts down, its disk is deleted, and it cannot be started again. After a while it disappears from listings. Terminated is free, and final.

Each command answers with the instance's previous and current state, such as running to stopping. Check where it is now with the same describe-instances query as before, asking for State.Name.

23.Stop, Start, Terminate

Stop and start

Terminate

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