Hadrien, just making sure I get the terminology, stopped instance meaning you don't pay for it, but just its storage, right? Or is it up and idling (and then Martin's suggestion is valid)? Do you get stopped instances instantely when you ask for them?

instead of terminating them once they are inactive, so that they could be available immediately when they are needed.

JitteryCoyote63 I think you can increase the IDLE timeout on the autoscaler, and achive the same behavior, no ?

Sounds like a great feature! Maybe open a github feature request to make it happen 🙂

Nevertheless there might still be some value in that, because it would allow to reduce the starting time by removing the initial setup of the agent + downloading of the data to the instance - but not as much as I described initially, if instances stopped are bound to the same capacity limitations as new instances launched

Yes AnxiousSeal95 , stopped instance meaning you don’t pay for it, but just its storage, as described https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/Stop_Start.html . So AgitatedDove14 increasing the IDLE timeout would still make me pay for the instance while they are idle.

Do you get stopped instances instantely when you ask for them?

Well that’s a good question, that’s what I observed some time ago, but according to their https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/troubleshooting-launch.html , we can get InsufficientInstanceCapacity error regardless whether we launch a new instance or restart one, so I am not so sure anymore

No I agree, it’s probably not worth it

Hmm got it. I think if it's only spin-up time, then it gets more complicated. You need to know that the stopped instance is for this autoscaler, and these instances will need to be manually cleared by users (or they'll continue to pay storage for them, and it's not clear from the autoscaler app that you will be doing that). Do you still think that adding this complexity has merits? What I'm afraid of is hidden costs of stopped instances (Plus, the autoscaler will need internal bookeeping to see which stopped machines are available for him, and to make sure they are aligned with its configuration)