What happens when I reboot an EC2 instance?

Question

When I reboot an EC2 instance, do I get the initial image again, or is the state of the hard disk before the reboot kept?

And what happens with billing, does the hour st

Answer 1

Rebooting an instance is like rebooting a PC. The hard disk isn't affected. You don't return to the image's original state, but the contents of the hard disks are those before the reboot.

Rebooting isn't associated with billing. Billing starts when you instantiate an image and stops when you terminate it. Rebooting in between hasn't any effect.