How do I automatically start and stop my Amazon EC2 instances?

EC2 Scheduler – AWS Answers

Automatically start and stop your Amazon EC2 instances using AWS CloudFormation and EC2 instance tags

Learn about this recent AWS solution in How do I automatically start and stop my Amazon EC2 instances?:

Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers infrastructure on demand so that customers can control their resource capacity and pay only for what they consume. One simple method to reduce Amazon Elastic Cloud Compute (Amazon EC2) costs is to stop Amazon EC2 instances that are not in use, and then start those instances again when their capacity is needed.
The EC2 Scheduler is a simple AWS-provided solution that enables customers to easily configure custom start and stop schedules for their Amazon EC2 instances. The solution is easy to deploy and can help reduce operational costs for both development and production environments. For customers who leave all of their Amazon EC2 instances running 24 hours a day, this solution can result in up to 70% cost savings for those instances that are only necessary during regular business hours.
This webpage provides best practices for implementing automated actions on resources, as well as an overview of the EC2 Scheduler design and functionality.
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