AWS has two types of AMIs: Instance Store backed and EBS backed. The difference between both the AMIs is explained here. The advantage of an EBS backed AMI is that it can be started, stopped or restarted. This helps in saving the cost of running the instance.

The present guide demonstrates how to start, stop or restart an AWS Instance.

1. Go to the AWS Console and select the EC2 service. It shows the EC2 dashboard. Select “Instances” or “Running Instances”.

2. Select the EBS backed instance that the user wants to start or stop. Verify that the root device is EBS for the selected instance.

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3. Right click on the selected instance. It lists all the possible actions to be performed on that instance.

4. The user can also select the Actions menu after selecting the instance. The action menu lists the similar actions for that instance, as explained in step#3. Select the “Stop” action.

5. AWS will confirm before stopping the instance. Click on “Yes, Stop”.

6. The instance stop process will start immediately. The instance will be in a “Stopping” state for sometime. It will then be in the “stopped” state.

7. To start the instance again, select the instance and click on “Start” from Actions.

8. AWS will confirm before starting the instance. Click on “Yes, Start”.

9. The instance will be in a pending state for sometime before starting again. Note that the public DNS, private IP and DNS of the instance will all change when it is restarted. If the user is using an elastic IP address with the instance, it is required to reallocate the address with the instance, as explained here.

10. To reboot the instance, select the instance and then the action “Reboot”.

11. AWS will confirm before restarting the instance. Click on “Yes, Reboot”.

12. The instance will temporarily be in a “Rebooting” state.

13. The instance will now be rebooted. It will be in a running state in sometime.

14. To run the above mentioned steps through the command line interface, first setup AWS EC2 CLI to launch an instance with the command line option, as explained here.

15. Run the following command to list the state of that instance:

ec2-describe-instance --region us-west-2 <instance id>

If the instance is in a running state, run the command below to stop the instance:

Ec2-stop-instance --region <region name> <instance id>

or,  to start the instance:

Ec2-start-instance--region <region name> <instance id>

16. The actual output is shown below:

Keywords: Amazon web services, Amazon AWS console, Amazon AWS instances, EC2 Service, Amazon cloud computing, EC2 EBS, S3 storage, Cloud cost efficient, AMI