Considering the current high demand of infrastructure, Amazon Web Services (AWS) upgrade the infrastructure and corresponding EC2 services regularly on a continual basis, with many patches and upgrades being applied to instances transparently. Some updates require a short instance reboot in order to apply the above mentioned updates. AWS EC2 has a functionality called monitor events, which provides visibility into the timing of the planned reboots. With the help of the above mentioned functionality, the user can use the scheduled events to manage reboots on their own before the scheduled update window.

The present guide demonstrates how to view the scheduled event. You can take actions, such as stop / reboot the instance against a planned action. You can also refer the maintenance guide.

Although AWS planned reboots are infrequent, such reboots are necessary from time to time to apply the upgrades that strengthen security, reliability and operational performance. The instance status functionality describes the specific events that AWS may schedule for the user’s instances. It provides information about the upcoming planned activities, such as rebooting or retirement for the user’s instances, along with the scheduled start and end time of each event.

There are five types of scheduled events:

1) Instance reboot

2) System reboot

3) Network maintenance

4) Power maintenance and

5) Instance retirement

Generally, the user is not required to perform any action, if one of the instances is scheduled for reboot. AWS recommends that the user should wait for the reboot to occur within its scheduled maintenance window. If the user wants to reboot before scheduled event during off production hours, it can be done manually. The user can view the scheduled events for the  instances using the AWS Management Console, the command line interface (CLI), or the API.

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1. When the instance is scheduled for reboot / retirement, AWS sends the notification email to the user.

2. Go to the AWS console. If there is an event planned, it will be displayed under the “Events” section. Click on the scheduled event or click on “Events” from the left navigation menu.

3. The Events console shows a list of all the resources with the events associated with them. The user can only view the list of instances that have upcoming events scheduled.

4. Select any instance that has been planned for reboot. It provides information, such as the instance ID, planned reboot / stop / retirement time, time remaining for the event as well as a description of the event.

5. Generally the AWS email, as shown in step#1, guides the user for any proactive action. The user can wait and let AWS take the necessary action. The user is required to take a proper back up of all transient (instance store) data.

6. 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.

7. Run the command:

Ec2-describe-instance-status   to list all the scheduled events.

Or

Run the command:

Ec2-describe-instance-status <instance id>  to list the specific instance details.

8. The actual output of the above mentioned command is shown below:

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Keywords: Amazon web services, Amazon AWS console, Amazon AWS instances, EC2 Service, Amazon cloud computing, System Reachability Check, Instance Status Check, Cloud Monitoring, CloudWatch, CLI tools, CloudWatch Alarm, AWS CLI, AWS Scheduled Events,