Konstantin Vlasenko

Here I want to explain how to start your Amazon EC2 instance recurrently by scheduling.


I have used the AWS Tools for Windows PowerShell. You can use java command line or python library. The main goal is to explain the idea:

I am going to automate the starting of my Fitnesse server.

Create launch configuration

New-ASLaunchConfiguration Fitnesse -ImageId ami-00000000 -SecurityGroups Fitnesse -InstanceType t1.micro -SpotPrice 0.011

Create Auto Scaling group with MinSize=MaxSize=0

New-ASAutoScalingGroup Fitnesse-AS -LaunchConfigurationName Fitnesse -AvailabilityZones us-east-1a -MinSize 0 -MaxSize 0

Set the Start scheduling action
The core thing is the MinSize=MaxSize=1 and the -Recurrence argument which is in the cron scheduler time format

Write-ASScheduledUpdateGroupAction -AutoScalingGroupName Fitnesse-AS -ScheduledActionName Start -MinSize 1 -MaxSize 1 -Recurrence '15 13 * * *'

Optionl (stop event)

Write-ASScheduledUpdateGroupAction -AutoScalingGroupName Fitnesse-AS -ScheduledActionName Stop -MinSize 0 -MaxSize 0 -Recurrence '59 23 * * *'