Even More EC2 Goodies in the AWS Management Console

We've added some new features to the EC2 tab of the AWS Management Console to make it even more powerful and even easier to use.

You can now change the instance type of a stopped, EBS-backed EC2 instance. This means that you can scale up or scale down as your needs change. The new instance type must be compatible with the AMI that you used to boot the instance, so you can't change from 32 bit to 64 bit or vice versa.

The Launch Instances Wizard now flags AMIs that will not incur any additional charges when used with an EC2 instance running within the AWS free usage tier:

You can now control what happens when an EBS-backed instance shuts itself down. You can choose to stop the instance (so that it can be started again later) or to terminate the instance:

You can now modify the EC2 user data (a string passed to the instance on startup) while the instance is stopped:

We'll continue to add features to the AWS Management Console to make it even more powerful and easier to use. Please feel free to leave us comments and suggestions.

-- Jeff;

Comments

[J]

Jeff, these are all very awesome, including the stopping and starting of instances. Do stopped instances incur billing costs?

[Jeff Barr]

Great question. There’s no cost for the instance. You would pay only for the EBS storage occupied by the instance, at $0.10/GB/month.

[Stephen]

Jeff, maybe I missed the documentation on this, but do you have any more information on 'the user data' that you can pass to the instance at startup?

[David Voge]

Change type of a running or non EBS root device instances would be great!

[Bart]

Jeff, nice new features (again) for EC2 but will stopped instances still get a new internal IP address once you start the EBS backed instance again?

[Jeff Barr]

Bart, you would get a new internal IP address when you start the instance. If you need a long-term fixed address you would need to use an Elastic IP address, and you would be charged for the time that it is allocated but not in use.

[Darryl]

I also just looked at another of your blogs Jeff, I'm assuming I have to upload everything a typical hard drive needs to function onto my server, programming languages, software, etc, geez I thought amazon intended for this server to be accessible to people with limited computer tech knowledge

[Frank Munz]

we used it before from the command-line, but IMHO it's a great move to include the resize feature into the management console.

thanks! Frank

[Tony]

The option to change the instance is MOST welcome! I use the Free Tier Miro instance while developing client websites, it's so nice to be able to change them up to a Small instance when their new site is ready to go live! Great addition, thank you!

[Pandora Bracelets]

Change type of a running or non EBS root device instances would be great!