EC2 Auto Scaling introduces instance lifecycle policy

EC2 Auto Scaling Instance Lifecycle Policy

EC2 Auto Scaling introduces a new feature called instance lifecycle policy, allowing customers to retain instances when termination lifecycle hooks fail or timeout, ensuring graceful shutdowns.

You can add lifecycle hooks to an Auto Scaling group (ASG) to perform custom actions when an instance enters a wait state. Choose a target service (e.g., Amazon EventBridge or AWS Lambda) to perform these actions. Customers use ASG lifecycle hooks to save application state, close database connections, back up data, delete sensitive data, or deregister from service discovery before instance termination.

Previously, both default results—continue and abandon—led to ASG terminating instances when the lifecycle hook timeout elapsed or if an unexpected failure occurred. With the new instance lifecycle policy, you can configure retention-triggers to keep your instances in a retained state for manual intervention until you're ready to terminate them again. This policy provides greater confidence in graceful instance termination, especially for stateful applications running on ASG.

What to do

• Visit the EC2 Auto Scaling console to get started.
• Refer to the technical documentation for more details.

Source: AWS release notes

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