Autostarting Amazon EC2 Instances with Launch Templates - Amazon Snowcone User Guide
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Autostarting Amazon EC2 Instances with Launch Templates

You can automatically start your Amazon EC2 instances on your Amazon Snowcone device using launch templates and Snowball Edge client launch configuration commands. If an instance exits, autostart will start it but If you delete the instance or update the autostart configuration of the instance, the autostart will start a new instance.

A launch template contains the configuration information necessary to create an Amazon EC2 instance on your Snowcone. You can use a launch template to store launch parameters so you don't have to specify them every time that you start an EC2 instance on your Snowcone.

When you use autostart configurations on your Snowcone, you configure the parameters that you want your Amazon EC2 instance to start with. After your Snowcone is configured, when you reboot and unlock it, it uses your autostart configuration to launch an instance with the parameters that you specified. If an instance that you launched using an autostart configuration is stopped, the instance starts running when you unlock your device.

Note

After you first configure an autostart configuration, restart your device to launch it. All subsequent instance launches (after planned or unplanned reboots) happen automatically after your Amazon Snowcone device is unlocked.

A launch template can specify the Amazon Machine Image (AMI) ID, instance type, user data, security groups, and tags for an Amazon EC2 instance when you launch that instance.

To automatically launch EC2 instances on your Snowcone, take the following steps:

  1. When you order your Amazon Snowcone device, create a job with compute instances. For more information, see Creating a Job with Compute Instances.

  2. After receiving your Snowcone, unlock it.

  3. Use the EC2 API command aws ec2 create-launch-template to create a launch template. For more information, see List of Supported Amazon EC2 Amazon CLI Commands on a Snowcone .

    Note

    The Amazon EC2 endpoint is the device endpoint.

  4. Use the Snowball Edge client command snowballEdge create-autostart-configuration to bind your EC2 launch template to your network configuration. For more information, see Creating a Launch Configuration to Autostart Amazon EC2 Instances.

  5. Reboot, then unlock your Amazon Snowcone device. Your EC2 instances are automatically started using the attributes specified in your launch template and your Snowcone client command create-autostart-configuration.

To view the status of your running instances, use the EC2 API command describe-autostart-configurations.

Note

There is no console or job management API for Amazon Snowball support for launching templates. You use EC2 and Snowball Edge client CLI commands to automatically start EC2 instances on your Amazon Snowcone device.