EC2 startup on schedule

Question

I need to start up an EC2 instance at (say) 6am every day. The constraints are that I\'d like to avoid having a computer running all day to do the startup or use a paid solu

Answer 1

IMHO adding a schedule to an auto scaling group is the best "cloud like" approach as mentioned before.

But in case you can't terminate your instances and use new ones, for example if you have Elastic IPs associated with etc.

You could create a Ruby script to start and stop your instances based on a date time range.

#!/usr/bin/env ruby

# based on https://github.com/phstc/amazon_start_stop

require 'fog'
require 'tzinfo'

START_HOUR = 6 # Start 6AM
STOP_HOUR  = 0 # Stop  0AM (midnight)

conn = Fog::Compute::AWS.new(aws_access_key_id:     ENV['AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID'],
                             aws_secret_access_key: ENV['AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY'])

server = conn.servers.get('instance-id')

tz = TZInfo::Timezone.get('America/Sao_Paulo')

now = tz.now

stopped_range = (now.hour >= STOP_HOUR && now.hour < START_HOUR)
running_range = !stopped_range

if stopped_range && server.state != 'stopped'
  server.stop
end

if running_range && server.state != 'running'
  server.start

  # if you need an Elastic IP
  # (everytime you stop an instance Amazon dissociates Elastic IPs)
  #
  # server.wait_for { state == 'running' }
  # conn.associate_address server.id, 127.0.0.0
end

Have a look at amazon_start_stop to create a scheduler for free using Heroku Scheduler.