AWS EC2 Status Checks and Recovery Options

During our training, we discussed the importance of understanding and managing status checks for EC2 instances in AWS. Here's a summary of the key points:

EC2 Status Checks

AWS performs automatic status checks on EC2 instances to identify potential hardware and software issues. There are two main types of status checks:

System Status Checks

• Monitors AWS system problems that affect the underlying infrastructure.
• Issues can include hardware failures or loss of power on the host.
• To review these issues, use the Personal Health Dashboard.
• Remediation typically involves stopping and starting the instance, which migrates it to a new host.

Instance Status Checks

• Monitors the software and network configuration of the individual instance.
• Issues can include invalid network configurations or exhausted memory.
• Remediation can be as simple as rebooting the instance or changing its configuration.

Automated Recovery Options

To automate the recovery process, you can leverage CloudWatch metrics and alarms:

Option 1: CloudWatch Alarms

• Set up CloudWatch Alarms for metrics like StatusCheckFailed_System and StatusCheckFailed_Instance.
• Configure the alarm to perform the "recover instance" action, which maintains the same IP addresses, metadata, and placement group.
• Optionally, send notifications via Amazon SNS.

Option 2: Auto Scaling Group