Hibernation prerequisites
To hibernate an On-Demand Instance, the following prerequisites must be in place:
Supported Windows AMIs
Must be an HVM AMI that supports hibernation:
-
Windows Server 2012 AMI released 2019.09.11 or later
-
Windows Server 2012 R2 AMI released 2019.09.11 or later
-
Windows Server 2016 AMI released 2019.09.11 or later
-
Windows Server 2019 AMI released 2019.09.11 or later
For information about the supported Linux AMIs, see Supported Linux AMIs in the Amazon EC2 User Guide for Linux Instances.
Supported instance families
-
General purpose: M3, M4, M5, M5a, M5ad, M5d, M6i, M6id, M7i, M7i-flex, T2, T3, and T3a
-
Compute optimized: C3, C4, C5, C5d, C6i, and C6id
-
Memory optimized: R3, R4, R5, R5a, R5ad, and R5d
-
Storage optimized: I3, and I3en
Note that for hibernating a T3 or T3a instance, we recommend at least 1 GB of RAM.
To see the available instance types that support hibernation in a specific Region
The available instance types vary by Region. To see the available instance types that
support hibernation in a Region, use the describe-instance-types command with the --region
parameter. Include the --filters parameter to scope the results to the
instance types that support hibernation and the --query parameter to
scope the output to the value of InstanceType.
aws ec2 describe-instance-types --filters Name=hibernation-supported,Values=true --query "InstanceTypes[*].[InstanceType]" --output text | sort
Example output
c3.2xlarge
c3.4xlarge
c3.8xlarge
c3.large
c3.xlarge
c4.2xlarge
c4.4xlarge
c4.8xlarge
...Instance size
Not supported for bare metal instances.
Instance RAM size
Can be up to 16 GB.
Note that for hibernating a T3 or T3a instance, we recommend at least 1 GB of RAM.
Root volume type
Must be an EBS volume, not an instance store volume.
EBS root volume size
Must be large enough to store the RAM contents and accommodate your expected usage, for example, OS or applications. If you enable hibernation, space is allocated on the root volume at launch to store the RAM.
Supported EBS volume types
-
General Purpose SSD (
gp2andgp3) -
Provisioned IOPS SSD (
io1andio2)
If you choose a Provisioned IOPS SSD volume type, you must provision the EBS volume with the appropriate IOPS to achieve optimum performance for hibernation. For more information, see Amazon EBS volume types.
EBS root volume encryption
To use hibernation, the root volume must be encrypted to ensure the protection of sensitive content that is in memory at the time of hibernation. When RAM data is moved to the EBS root volume, it is always encrypted. Encryption of the root volume is enforced at instance launch.
Use one of the following three options to ensure that the root volume is an encrypted EBS volume:
-
EBS encryption by default – You can enable EBS encryption by default to ensure that all new EBS volumes created in your Amazon account are encrypted. This way, you can enable hibernation for your instances without specifying encryption intent at instance launch. For more information, see Encryption by default.
-
EBS "single-step" encryption – You can launch encrypted EBS-backed EC2 instances from an unencrypted AMI and also enable hibernation at the same time. For more information, see Use encryption with EBS-backed AMIs.
-
Encrypted AMI – You can enable EBS encryption by using an encrypted AMI to launch your instance. If your AMI does not have an encrypted root snapshot, you can copy it to a new AMI and request encryption. For more information, see Encrypt an unencrypted image during copy and Copy an AMI.
Enable hibernation at launch
You cannot enable hibernation on an existing instance (running or stopped). For more information, see Enable hibernation for an instance.
Purchasing options
This feature is available for On-Demand Instances, including those that have a Reserved Instance billing discount applied to them. It is not available for Spot Instances. For information about hibernating a Spot Instance, see Hibernate interrupted Spot Instances.