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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

Launch new EC2 instances from an Amazon Machine Image (AMI), or terminate existing EC2 instances, as part of an incident runbook. Use EC2: Create Instances to launch replacement capacity, for example after a bad deploy or an instance failure. Use EC2: Terminate Instances to remove instances that are unhealthy or no longer needed.

These actions are useful for:

Launching one or more replacement instances from a known-good AMI during an incident.
Terminating instances that are confirmed unhealthy, misconfigured, or no longer needed.
Automating instance lifecycle steps within a single workflow — create a replacement, verify it, and terminate the old instance.
Recording created and terminated instance IDs and 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: Create Instances

Name	Description
Integration (Required)	Select a Workflow Integration or click New AWS Connection to establish a new one.
AWS Region	The AWS region to launch instances in (for example, `us-west-2`). If left blank, the action uses `us-east-1`.
AMI ID (Required)	The Amazon Machine Image ID to launch (for example, `ami-0abcdef1234567890`).
Instance Type (Required)	The EC2 instance type (for example, `t3.micro`).
Min Count (Required)	The minimum number of instances to launch. Must be a positive integer.
Max Count (Required)	The maximum number of instances to launch. Must be a positive integer greater than or equal to Min Count.
Key Name	The EC2 key pair name for SSH access.
Security Group IDs	One or more security group IDs, separated by commas.
Subnet ID	The subnet ID to launch instances into.
Tags	A JSON array of `{"Key": "...", "Value": "..."}` tag objects to apply to the created instances.

EC2: Terminate 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 terminate, separated by commas.

Outputs

EC2: Create Instances

Name	Description
Created Instances	A JSON array of created instances. Each object includes the instance ID, current state, and instance type.
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: Terminate Instances

Name	Description
Terminating Instances	A JSON array of instances and their state transitions, 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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Action Limitations

EC2: Terminate Instances is not Auto Scaling Group (ASG)-aware. It terminates any EC2 instances that you provide and has no option to decrement desired capacity. If an instance belongs to an ASG, terminating it with this action can trigger the ASG to launch a replacement immediately, which causes unexpected capacity changes. For controlled ASG termination, use AWS: Terminate an EC2 Instance Belonging to an ASG, which supports a Should Decrement Desired Capacity option.

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Tips

Termination is irreversible: After an instance is terminated, its instance state, local instance-store storage, and any EBS volumes not configured to persist are lost. Confirm the instance IDs before you run this action in an automated workflow.

Field references: Chain these actions with EC2: Describe Instances, AWS: Fetch ASG Membership and Lifecycle Details, or incident custom details to populate Instance IDs or AMI ID dynamically instead of hardcoding them.

Replacement runbooks: A common pattern is to run EC2: Create Instances to launch a replacement, add a health check or a Logic: Delay step, and then run EC2: Terminate Instances to remove the bad instance, all in the same workflow.