I want to start a micro instance to run a really small task (less than 5 minutes long) and then terminate itself. I plan to use spot instances (because it's cheaper), but I'm open to other alternatives.
If I do that, will I be charged for the fraction of the hour? Or will I be charged as if the instance was used for the entire hour?
Also, will I be charged for the boot and termination time? or only for the time the instance was active?
I found on AWS FAQs a question that says:
- Will I be charged if my Spot Instance is terminated by Amazon EC2 before the hour is up?-
No. If the Spot Instance is terminated by Amazon EC2, you will not be charged for a partial hour of usage. However, if you terminate the instance yourself, you will be charged for any hour in which the instance ran.
In my case, the instance will be terminated by me, so I'm not sure what they meant by saying "if you terminate the instance yourself, you will be charged for any hour in which the instance ran".
Yes if you terminate the instance in fraction of hour you will be charged for whole hour. Let me give you an example.
Lets say you are using a instance for 1 Hr 20 Min.
So if AWS terminates that instance you will be charged only for 1 Hr.
But if you terminate that instance you will be charged for 2 hrs.
Related
I am trying to host an application on AWS. I am comparing hosting it on Lambda and on EC2, and was thinking about "sides costs".
Indeed with lambda I am charged for cold starts, and I was wondering if when starting/stopping an EC2 instance you're charged for this time, since my instance will take something between 1 or 2 minutes to start and stop.
Since I plan to start and shut down quite a lot of instances frequently it would represent a non negligible cost for me if I am charged for this period.
You pay when the instance is in RUNNING state. From docs:
If your instance is billed by the second, then you're billed for a minimum of 60 seconds each time a new instance is started—that is, when the instance enters the running state.
This is independent of your application on the instance.
As described in the title, I remember before in AWS spot market that if a spot instance is revoked in its first hour, all the charges would be refunded fully. Does this policy still work now?
If the EC2 service terminates or stops the spot instance in the first hour, then you are not charged.
To quote the Spot Instances FAQ:
If your Spot instance is terminated or stopped by Amazon EC2 in the
first instance hour, you will not be charged for that usage. However,
if you terminate the instance yourself, you will be charged to the
nearest second. If the Spot instance is terminated or stopped by
Amazon EC2 in any subsequent hour, you will be charged for your usage
to the nearest second. If you are running on Windows and you terminate
the instance yourself, you will be charged for an entire hour.
When I spawn a cluster on Amazon EMR, it takes some time to launch. If I terminate the cluster before it gets created, do I get charged at all.
The cluster also takes some time to terminate. Suppose I terminate the cluster at 58 minutes and the cluster takes an additional 5 minutes to terminate. Do I get charged for 1 hour or 2 hours.
Amazon EMR has two cost components: Amazon EC2 and Amazon EMR
Both are charged based upon the running time of the Amazon EC2 instances. So, you will be charged for the number of 60-minute periods that each Amazon EC2 instance was running (rounded up).
In your example, if you terminated the cluster at 58 minutes but the instances were still shown as "running" beyond 60 minutes, they would be charged for an additional hour.
If you are using Auto Scaling for EMR clusters, instances will automatically remain running until the end of the billing hour (giving extra capacity at no extra charge, through to the end of the hour).
For example the list price for a nano instance is $0.0065 per Hour.
If I start and immediately terminate a nano instance, did it cost me $0.0065?
The reason this question relates to programming is because I am programmatically launching instances and I want to know if it's going to cost alot or be a trivial expense if my code does live launching as I'm testing.
For "on demand" EC2
Pricing is per instance-hour consumed for each instance, from the
time an instance is launched until it is terminated or stopped. Each
partial instance-hour consumed will be billed as a full hour.
See https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/
This used to be the case...but now (as of Oct 2021)
Each partial instance-hour consumed is billed per-second for instances launched in Linux, Windows, or Windows with SQL Enterprise, SQL Standard, or SQL Web instances
If your instance is billed by the second, then you're billed for a minimum of 60 seconds each time a new instance is started—that is, when the instance enters the running state
Some instances do still have a minimum charge period of one hour, but in the case of the OP's question the answwer is now 1 minute minimum
See https://aws.amazon.com/premiumsupport/knowledge-center/ec2-instance-hour-billing/
I want to programmatically launch and shutdown instances via API.
I know little about AWS , how is kind of action will be charged ?
if one instance costs for 10 dollar for one hour.
And I launch and shutdown it back and forth 10 times in 1 hour.
How will it be charged ?
From Stop and Start Your Instance
Each time you start a stopped instance we charge a full instance hour, even if you make this transition multiple times within a single hour.
So in your example, you'll be charged $10 * 10 = $100
The correct terminology is start and stop the same instance. When you launch, you create a new instance, still the charge remains $100.
If you launch and shutdown a single instance 10 times in one hour, you will be charged for 10 hours worth of time.
Amazon charges by the hour, rounded up to the nearest hour, by instance. Partial hours don't get combined with other partial hours.
You defintely don't want to start and stop instances over and over again if you can avoid it.