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Hello,

Is it possible to dynamically start / stop an existing ec2 instance?

Pulumi up would start the instance, destroy would stop it, without destroying it?

I don’t see how to do it with the api.

EC2 instances come up started by default. 

If you wanted to then stop it, you can do that but you'll need to use automation API and the AWS SDK as there isn't a property on the instance resource that says "start the instance, run any user data etc and then stop it"

ok thank you. No plan on providing this feature?

Not as far as I know, using the base Pulumi software. As I said, you could do something using automation API to stop the instance once the provisioning has been completed.

You could use an event that runs a lambda that uses the aws sdk to stop the instance after it comes up <https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/automating_with_eventbridge.html>

<https://aws.amazon.com/premiumsupport/knowledge-center/start-stop-lambda-cloudwatch/>

Great point. I always forget about tying things like this up with event bridge. Good spot

Having said that, what triggers the "running" event? Is it when the instance has started or when everything has finished (including all the cloud-init stuff)? From experience, running doesn't mean that userData has finished being run, for example

But I guess you could do "running + 5 minutes" or something like that