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AWS Solutions Library

Instance Scheduler on AWS

Configure start and stop schedules for your HAQM EC2 and HAQM RDS instances to manage costs

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Overview

Instance Scheduler on AWS automates the starting and stopping of various AWS services, including HAQM Elastic Compute Cloud (HAQM EC2), HAQM EC2 Auto Scaling Groups, and HAQM Relational Database Service (HAQM RDS) instances. Automating this process helps reduce operational costs by stopping and starting resources as needed. This AWS Solution uses resource tags and AWS Lambda to automatically stop and start instances based on a schedule you define, and it can be deployed across multiple AWS Regions.

When compared to a setup where you leave all your instances continuously running at full utilization (even when those resources aren't being used), this solution can lead to significant cost savings by aligning your workloads with the AWS Well-Architected Cost Optimization best practices.

Benefits

This solution includes a template that creates the AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) roles necessary to start and stop instances in secondary accounts. 
This solution can automatically add tags to all instances it starts or stops. The solution also includes macros that allow you to add variable information to the tags.
This solution includes a command line interface (CLI) that provides commands for configuring schedules and periods. The CLI allows customers to estimate cost savings for a given schedule.
For EC2 instances, this solution can use Systems Manager maintenance windows defined in the same AWS Region as the instances and start and stop the instances for the maintenance window.

How it works

You can automatically deploy this architecture using the implementation guide and the accompanying AWS CloudFormation templates, or get started with the resources below.

View implementation guide

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Ready to deploy? Open the CloudFormation template in the AWS Console to begin setting up the infrastructure you need. You'll be prompted to access your AWS account if you haven't yet logged in.

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With Quick Setup, a capability of AWS Systems Manager, you can configure Resource Scheduler to automate the starting and stopping of your EC2 instances across your AWS accounts and Regions. Resource Scheduler provides a simple user interface (UI). To learn more about Resource Scheduler, review related resources in the implementation guide.

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