I'm in the need of AWS instances but only for short periods of time, for example 1 minute every 20 minutes. This means, launching an instance, doing some work for a couple minutes and then shutting down for 20 minutes.
Does AWS apply extra fees or limit accounts that follow this behavior?
Quote from AWS page : Pricing is per instance-hour consumed for each instance, from the time an instance is launched until it is terminated. Each partial instance-hour consumed will be billed as a full hour.
Does this mean that each 2 minute session will be billed as a full hour? I'm guessing no, but I can't be sure.
Every time you run or start an instance you are charged for at least one hour of run time (more if you leave it running past 60 minutes, obviously).
You will be charged three times as much for starting and stopping an instance three times an hour instead of just leaving an instance running full time.
Here's an experiment I ran in 2010 demonstrating this billing quirk:
EBS Boot Instance Stop+Start Begins a New Hour of Charges on EC2
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.
I'm trying to optimize cost for my project for some valid reasons we're running it on very expensive instances.
To the best of my knowledge Amazon charges by hours. For instance, if I'm running my EC2 instance for 1 hour and 4 minutes I'll be charged 2 hours.
What would be the best way to shut down instance closest to the next billing cycle, but not exceeding current one?
I was trying to do this based on uptime, but there is some difference between aws billing and uptime value.
I'm looking to use watchdog sitting on the instance itself. So I can pass parameters during provision and it will shut down itself say after 2 full billing cycles.
You can get the time that Amazon starts billing from the EC2 instance (assumes you have jq installed)
curl -s http://169.254.169.254/latest/dynamic/instance-identity/document/ | jq .pendingTime
and you could run a shell script once a minute to shut down after, say 58 minutes.
But this is a pain. If your processing is able to handle interruptions of an instance running then you should look at using spot instances perhaps with a fixed duration. This allows you to run at a reduced price for a known period of time without any additional costs because of running over.
If your workload is complete before the full hour, stop/terminate your instance right away when the work is complete. No need to keep the instance idle for the remainder of the hour.
The only time this may not be efficient is if you may have more work coming in before the full hour, and then you want to keep it running to process that new work. But that will only be the case if work is sporadic. And if it is sporadic, then it just may be better to keep it running.
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.
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.