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Availability
This workflow action is available to customers on PD Reliability Platform plans. See PD Reliability Platform plans for more information.

Description

Start one or more stopped EC2 instances, or stop one or more running EC2 instances, as part of an incident runbook.

These actions are useful for:

Restarting a stopped instance as a first remediation step for an unresponsive service.
Stopping an instance suspected of causing issues (for example, a runaway process or resource exhaustion) without losing its EBS volumes or instance state.
Power-cycling an instance by stopping and then starting it as a troubleshooting step.
Recording instance state transitions for incident notes or audits.

Instructions

If you have not done so, follow the instructions to Create an Incident Workflow.
When the instructions prompt you to add actions, select this action.
Enter the following Inputs and click Save.
Continue following instructions to Publish the Workflow.
When the action runs, you will see the Outputs listed below.

Inputs

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Field References
Fields with the {+} icon accept Field References, which can be useful for referencing incident data or outputs created in prior workflow steps. To add Field References, click {+}, or enter {{, and select relevant fields. Refer to the Field References article for more information.

EC2: Start Instances

Name	Description
Integration (Required)	Select a Workflow Integration or click New AWS Connection to establish a new one.
AWS Region	The AWS region where the instances are located (for example, `us-west-2`). If left blank, the action uses `us-east-1`.
Instance IDs (Required)	One or more EC2 instance IDs to start, separated by commas.

EC2: Stop Instances

Name	Description
Integration (Required)	Select a Workflow Integration or click New AWS Connection to establish a new one.
AWS Region	The AWS region where the instances are located (for example, `us-west-2`). If left blank, the action uses `us-east-1`.
Instance IDs (Required)	One or more EC2 instance IDs to stop, separated by commas.

Outputs

EC2: Start Instances

Name	Description
Starting Instances	A JSON array of instance state transition objects, from previous state to current state.
Result	Value that shows if the action was successful or not. Either "Success" or "Failed."
Result Summary	Brief description of what the action did or if it failed.
Error	Brief description that is populated if the action failed.

EC2: Stop Instances

Name	Description
Stopping Instances	A JSON array of instance state transition objects, from previous state to current state.
Result	Value that shows if the action was successful or not. Either "Success" or "Failed."
Result Summary	Brief description of what the action did or if it failed.
Error	Brief description that is populated if the action failed.

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Tips

Stopping is not terminating: Stopping an instance preserves its instance state and EBS volumes, so you can start it again later. To permanently remove an instance, use EC2: Terminate Instances instead.

Public IP changes on start: Unless the instance uses an Elastic IP, it can receive a new public IP address each time it starts. Update any downstream steps or DNS records that reference the old IP address.

Power-cycle pattern: Chain EC2: Stop Instances, a Logic: Delay step, and EC2: Start Instances in one workflow to restart an unresponsive instance without terminating and recreating it.

Field references: Reference Instance IDs from EC2: Describe Instances, AWS: Fetch ASG Membership and Lifecycle Details, or the incident's custom details so the workflow can run unattended when an alert triggers it.