How to turn on/off cloud instances during office hours

Question

I\'ve got my head around creating cloud instances in AWS, Azure and Rackspace. However, I need to turn my instances off at the end of the day and on in the morning as this w

Answer 1

Azure

REST:

You can do this to Azure deployments by using the Windows Azure Service Management REST API. Because it is REST you can use most programming languages to access it.

You could have an application running on your local machine that schedules calls to these services to delete at a certain time at the end of office hours and then create your service again in the morning.

PowerShell:

Or you can manage your deployments in the same way but instead of using REST you can use Azure PowerShell cmdlets. I have done this way myself and it works nicely.

To help you get started there is a nice tutorial on how to do use PowerShell to deploy Azure applications.

also if you didn't already know I should also mention there is a 3month free trial with Azure if you are simply looking for cutting costs whilst developing.

Answer 2

The best article on automation + switching on/off VMs I have found so far. [05 February 2015]. http://clemmblog.azurewebsites.net/using-azure-automation-start-und-stop-virtual-machines-schedule/

Answer 3

Yes Automation Runbook are there by which we can schedule the job. I created the script for stopping (De-allocated) Azure VM.

https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/Deallocate-all-VM-under-79049c69

Please read about how to use runbook http://azure.microsoft.com/blog/2014/06/19/azure-automation-runbook-management/

Dellocation and stop are different, since stop vm will also incur cost.

Answer 4

Refer to this article, there some options to turn your instances on/off inside AWS.

• AWS Datapipeline
• AWS Lambda scheduled events
• Scheduled Cron on EC2 instance
• Scheduled Scaling of Auto Scaling Group

So in your case I'd recommend the followings:

For AWS:

Through Shell Command like AWS CLI commands: See Turn on/off Cloud instances using AWS Pipeline. this method will initiate a separate EC2 instance to be started and terminated for each AWS API call that running times affect to your Bill.

Through programming languages like Node.js / Python: See Turn on/off Cloud instances using AWS Lambda. The task running twice a day for typically less than 3 seconds with memory consumption up to 128MB typically costs less than $0.0004 USD/month

For Azure and Rackspace (or other platforms you may have):
Use the above tools to provide a Respective API to start/stop instances on demand.

You may also consider to set scripts-per-boot which runs each time your instance is started.

Answer 5

NOTE: As for June of 2013, IaaS Instances can be placed in a "stopped (deallocated)" state. In this state you are only billed for storage of any disks associated with the VM. The original answer below describes a VM instance that is in a "stopped" but not deallocated state. The deallocated state is currently the default for VM stop actions taken via the Azure management portal.

The only way to accomplish this in Widows Azure today is to delete the deployment.

If you stop the service, you are still billed (like renting office space, you pay for it even if you aren't in it), and you can't set the instance count to zero. An option may use is to just reduce the instance count to absolute minimum (1) an then scale it back up during needed hours. But the cost benefits of this will depend on the size of your instances.

Answer 6

AWS

AWS SDK is your best bet but I am using TotalCloud.io to start and stop instances under the free tier. Very customizable.

Easy to setup.