So far this year, I've probably spent $40 in charges I could have
avoided by terminating instances when I stopped needing them.  Often,
I know when I start an instance that it is only to test a short
process and I don't expect to have it running more than the first
hour.

Here's a trick which can be used to start an instance and have that
instance shut itself down in 50 minutes:

  ec2-run-instances AMIID --key KEYPAIR --user-data '#!bin/sh
  shutdown -h +50 >/dev/null &'

Note that this is a two line command with a newline after #!/bin/sh

When you ssh in to the instance, you will get a repeated warning
letting you know how long you have until the instance terminates.

If at any point you wish to cancel the automatic shutdown and keep
that system up, you can use the command:

  sudo shutdown -c

I chose 50 minutes to keep the EC2 charge under a single hour allowing
for startup and shutdown which may take a couple minutes, depending on
the image.

This works on any AMI which supports user-data scripts including the
Ubuntu and Debian images I publish on http://alestic.com and the
latest official Ubuntu beta2 images.

I've yet to forget to shutdown a EC2 instance for the first time, but I
reckon I would eventually :)

Seth

That's sweet. Thank you. We run a server backup product based on your
old Aelestic AMI and I can use that trick when people want restorations.

BTW, if you want to see our product, take a look at
http://www.hens-teeth.net/html/products/nest_egg_backup.php

Cheers,
    -- Art Z.

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