Save AWS costs by scheduled start and stop of EC2 instances

Sun, 15 Nov 2015 14:56:57 +0000

Most of the AWS resources are billed on per-hour basis which provides us an opportunity to save cost based on the usage pattern. Especially in case of Dev/Test environment, we need them only during the working days and working hours.

By using AWS Lambda function (python) in combination with EC2 instance tags, scheduled start or stop can be achieved with few lines of code.

Advantages of using AWS Lambda:

For 128MB memory we get 3,200,000 seconds free tier usage per month in AWS Lambda which will be more than enough for this function.
IAM role will be associated with the Lambda function which will be used to perform the required task and no separate keys need to be configured.

I used a tag with name as schedule & JSON string for tag value using which I could define the day and time when it needs to be started or stopped.

Save Cost on Technology Enlightened

Save AWS costs by scheduled start and stop of EC2 instances