Start and Stop EC2 instance using Bashscript

Start and Stop EC2 instance using Bashscript

July 17, 2020 / Nirav S

Do you want to know, how to start and stop instance with a bash script?

Note This script and method will work only if your both EC2 Instances are within the same VPC, same Region and same AWS account.

Step 1

Connect to EC2 Instance via SSH or putty

Step 2

Create Two Script files , start and stop script at any location. Let say I am creating them in /root directory.
Use Vi or Nano editor to create or edit the files.

$ nano /root/ec2instance_start.sh

Add the following lines in the start script and save and exit using Ctrl+O and Ctrl+ x command.

#! /bin/bash
aws ec2 start-instances –instance-ids i-f0c3678r3dba65876
$ nano /root/ec2instance_stop.sh

Add the following lines in the stop script and save and exit using Ctrl+O and Ctrl+ x command.

#! /bin/bash
aws ec2 stop-instances –instance-ids i-f0c3678r3dba65876

Step 3 Make the scripts executable

To make both the scripts executable run following commands.

$ chmod +x /root/ec2instance_start.sh
$ chmod +x /root/ec2instance_stop.sh

Step 4 Schedule the Stop and Start using Cronjob.

Run the following command to edit your Cron job.

$ crontab -e

Add the following line to start and stop the instance at 11 AM and 7 PM respectively.

00 11 * * * sh /root/ec2instance_start.sh > /tmp/ec2instance_start.log
00  19  * * * sh /root/ec2instance_stop.sh > /tmp/ec2instance_stop.log

Once everything shown as above is done, the EC2 instance will start and stop at the above mentioned time.