AWSpot

AWSpot is a command line utility that makes managing Amazon AWS spot resources simple and intuitive. It’s intended for one-off projects in which you want quick access to cheap, secure, easily deployed compute resources. With AWSpot, launching, accessing, and terminating EC2 spot instances can all be completed in seconds with short, single line commands.

Intuitive use is the priority. Thus, resources are referenced and managed by name instead of impossible to remember ID strings. Please note this is great for personal use and one-off applications, but may not be suitable for production code.

NOTE: The only available resource type is ec2. Spot fleet and EMR management are in progress.

Example Usage

Let’s say I want to spin up a machine pre-loaded with Anaconda. Let’s also assume I have a launch_spec.json file containing the basic settings for my machine (security groups, size, etc):

{
  "ImageId": "ami-2ae0ab52",
  "KeyName": "ec2_default",
  "SecurityGroupIds": [ "sg-a60747df" ],
  "InstanceType": "t2.xlarge",
  "Placement": {
    "AvailabilityZone": "us-west-2a"
  },
  "IamInstanceProfile": {
      "Arn": "arn:aws:iam::028206436608:instance-profile/s3_access_only"
  }
}

To launch an instance I need to do is run:

awspot ec2 launch -n myproject -s ./launch_spec.json -p "0.07"

To ssh into my machine, I simply run:

awspot ec2 ssh -n myproject -i ~/.ssh/myawskey.pem -u ec2-user

Once I’m finished, I can terminate my instance with:

awspot ec2 terminate -n myproject

It’s as simple as that!

Setup

Install and configure awscli.
Run pip install awspot

Usage

Commands follow this pattern:

awspot <resource_type> <action> <args>

Below are the details of the available resource types, their actions, and their args.

ec2

EC2 actions are accessed via awspot ec2 <action> <args>

launch

Launch an EC2 spot instance.

-s | --specifications: Path to JSON file with launch specifications. (required)
-u | --userdata: Path to userdata script (runs on instance boot). (optional)
-p | --price: Max spot resource bid price. (required)
-n | --name: Spot resource name. (required)

terminate

Terminate an EC2 spot instance.

-n | --name: Spot resource name. (required)

ssh

SSH into an active spot instance. Note that you can use the optional flag --add_ssh_profile to create an SSH profile for the resource. For example, creating a profile for the myproject instance in the example above would allow you to acess the instance with the command ssh myproject. You may then use the --remove_ssh_profile flag to remove the profile once the resource is terminated.

-n | --name: Spot resource name. (required)
-i | --identity_file: .pem file for SSH authentication. (optional*)
-u | --user: user to login as. (optional*)
--forward_agent: Forward SSH agent from local machine. (optional)
--add_ssh_profile: Create an SSH profile with the provided info.
--remove_ssh_profile: Remove an SSH profile for an AWSpot resource with the provided name.

list_active

List active(running) EC2 spot instances.

Learn More

To learn more about AWS resource management, please refer to the resources below: