I have right now AWS free tier instance. I purchased a m3.large reserved instance. Now how can i run and use this as i was using free tier instance .
I cant see any start/stop option for reserved instance.
Reserved instances are purely an accounting/billing thing. There is not a special way to "run" a reserved instance. Simply run an instance that matches the specifications of your reserved instance purchase and it will run at the reserved instance rate rather than the on-demand rate.
Basically AWS billing sees that you're running an instance for the hour. They check to see if there is a reserved instance purchased that matches the specifications of the running instance. If one is found, that hour is billed at the reserved rate. If one is not found, then you're charged at the on-demand rate.
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Our organization has many EC2 on-demand instances. We never looked at the reserved instance pricing because we thought we had to pay up-front. But I see that now there are reserved instance with no up-front costs, but monthly.
This looks like what we need to keep costs down, but I am unclear as to how the reserved instance pricing is applied.
For example, we have 10 t3.medium ec2 instance. Let's say that there are 6 always running 24/7, but the other 4 are not running 24/7, they are turned off when not in use.
If I buy a reserved instance for t3.medium, how does AWS know to apply it to the instances running 24/7 and not part time?
For example, we have 10 t3.medium ec2 instance. Let's say that there
are 6 always running 24/7, but the other 4 are not running 24/7, they
are turned off when not in use.
If I buy a reserved instance for t3.medium, how does AWS know to apply
it to the instances running 24/7 and not part time?
Amazon doesn't apply reserved pricing to a specific instance at all. It basically just applies reserved pricing to your bill. It's like a discount at the time your bill is processed. If you have reserved pricing for N instances, and you have at least N instances running 24/7 reflected in your bill, then the reserved pricing gets applied to those N instances.
Amazon doesn't really care if you are running a single specific instance 24/7, or deleting and recreating instances once a minute. In the end it's just the total number of seconds you have a specific type of instance running each month that they care about, and bill you for.
Be aware that when you setup instance reservations it is actually a capacity reservation. You are telling Amazon you are committing to running this type of instance 24/7 for either 1 year or 3 years. By letting Amazon know this, it helps with their capacity planning, and in return they give you a cost discount. But it also means that they are going to charge you for that reserved capacity even if you don't actually have that instance running 24/7.
I lunched a reserved instance for RDS yesterday. I waited for the billing to be updated till today morning (it takes normally 6 hours to a day). Now when I go to the Billing the reserved instance and on-demand instance, both are active and being charged. I was hoping once I created the reserved instance of same instance type, AZ, Tenancy the reserved instance would apply to the on-demand instance.
My on-demand aurora mysql instance look like this:
My Reserved Instance:
My Billing overview:
======== Edit
Apparently, It takes 24 hours to takes RI to take effect so that on demand instance can use it. There was nothing wrong with what I've done... just needed some time.
I have a small query on AWS Auto Scaling.
For auto scaling group, we need to set minimum (1 server) and maximum no of instances to scale.
Question:
Lets assume, I already have a reserved instance running 24x7.
I will create an AMI of the reserved instance and use this AMI for auto scaling.
I want to make this reserved instance as part of auto scaling group (this become my minimum 1 server in the auto scaling group).
But I don't want this reserved instance to terminate at all (as I have my elastic IP taken for this) when I scale down, but other instances can terminate as the load comes down.
How can I achieve this?
Kindly suggest.
Thanks in advance.
Instances reservations are not tied to a specific EC2 instance. As long as you have an instance running that matches your reservation, you will be charged the reservation's hourly rate.
This reserved instance should not be in the auto-scaling group. You only want it to be in the instances used under the Elastic Load Balancer. The auto-scaling group should only contain instances that are dynamic.
You can set this instance under the load balancer and it will never be terminated.
Remember to set the auto-scaling group minimum to zero, so when the load is low on the reserved instance, the auto-scaling group would call the decrease instance policy, and you would lessen the charges.
The concept of a Reserved Instance is always confusing.
A Reserved Instance is a pre-payment for a certain capacity (Instance Type, OS, optional AZ). For example, let's say you purchase a 1-year Reserved Instance for an m4.large Linux instance. This means that, for every hour of the year, you can run an m4.large Linux instance at no hourly charge, because you have pre-paid it annually or monthly.
Please note that you do not choose which instance receives this billing benefit. Rather, each hour of the year, if an instance is running that matches the Reserved Instance purchased, it is not charged for that hour.
Therefore, you can't really say things like "I want to make this reserved instance as part of auto scaling group" or "create an AMI of the reserved instance" because you have no knowledge nor control over which instance receives the billing benefit. Simply be happy in the knowledge that an instance running that matches the Reserved Instance will receive the benefit.
So, if you have one Reserved Instance and you are running at least one EC2 instance of the matching Instance Type and OS in a given hour, then one of those instances will not receive an hourly charge. It doesn't have to be a specific instance that you nominate.
Side-note: Stopping and Starting an instance triggers a new billing hour. Only one hour is not charged each hour per Reserved Instance purchased. So, if Auto Scaling launching an instance, terminates it, then launches another within the same hour, there will be a charge. Only the first billable hour per Reserved Instance owned will be "not charged".
(I recall seeing something that said that the Reserved Instance benefit is typically applied to the instance with the earliest Launch Time and that if it is stopped/terminated, the benefit goes to the instance with the next earliest Launch Time -- but that might not be accurate.)
I have reservation of type t2.micro and us-ease-1d availability zone, also I have multiple instances running, including the one with mentioned type and zone.
As a result I expect billing for this one instance will take into account the reservation. The problem is that I haven't found any link between reservation and actual instances.
I've used aws ec2 describe-instances and aws ec2 describe-reserved-instances CLI commands but I wasn't able to find any link.
Is it possible to realise which billing approach will be used for each instance using Amazon SDK?
So f.e. I will see that some instance is linked to some reserved instance (reservation)
Is it possible to realise which billing approach will be used for each instance using Amazon SDK?
No, it isn't.
The "link" between reserved instances and running instances is not something the EC2 operational infrastructure knows about. It's all done after the fact, in billing.
Each hour, for a given instance type and availability zone placement, you're billed for your reserved instances (depending on the terms of the reservation, this happens whether you have this many instances running or not, though in some cases, the amount billed here is $0 since you've already paid). Then, if the number of running on-demand instances for that type and placement exceeds exceeds the number of reserved instances for that type and placement, the difference for that hour is billed at the on-demand rate.
So if you had purchased one reserved instance matching a certain spec and during a given hour you had two such instances running, it's not really the case that one of your instances "is the reserved instance" and the other one isn't. If you stop either one, then the next hour, the reserved instance pricing applies to the one that remains running... but EC2 can't tell you which is which and, in fact, the billing logic is such that it doesn't matter.
There isn't really a link between reservations and specific instances. Think of it more like a discount that gets applied to your bill, after you have incurred some instance charges.
You can use the Reserved Instance Utilization Report to see how your reservations have been applied to the instance hours you have been charged for.
Can AWS Reserved Instances be used in OpsWorks?
If so, how? Any documentation would be great.
Thanks.
Yes, because a reserved instance is just a billing mechanism, not a specific machine - when you buy a reserved instance you are just agreeing ahead of time to pay a certain amount for a certain type of machine (whether you use it or not).
If you already have a reserved instance 'under contract' and have not yet spun it up, if you use Opsworks to spin it up, you will be charge your reserved price while that instance is running.
If you have 3 reserved instances, and you spin up 4 in Opsworks, you will be charge 3 instances at the reserved price, and one at the on demand price.
If you buy 5 reserved instances and only spin up 2 in Opsworks, you still are on the hook for all 5 reserved instances.