Scripts for starting permanent, lightweight EC2 instances. I use them mainly to keep permanent SSH sessions (using screen) and for building, pushing and testing Docker images.
I use a dedicated EC2 keyfile for this purpose. I assume you have one already at ~/.aws/percy.pem.
This automates creation of the instance. Some notes on costs and instance setup as of 9/3/18:
| vCPU | Mem | Storage | us-east-1 (spot) [spot per yr] |
us-east-2 (spot) [spot per yr] |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
t3.micro |
2 | 1 GiB | EBS only | $0.0104 ($0.0031) [$27] | $0.0104 ($0.0031) [$27] |
t3.small |
2 | 2 GiB | EBS only | $0.0208 ($0.0063) [$54] | $0.0208 ($0.0063) [$54] |
t3.medium |
2 | 4 GiB | EBS only | $0.0416 ($0.0125) [$110] | $0.0416 ($0.0125) [$110] |
(and so on for t3.large, t3.xlarge, t3.2xlarge)
Since these are going to be used for running containers, they will need some storage. These instances are EBS-only, so we need to consult the EBS storage pricing charts.
Main storage types of interest are gp1 (SSD) and st1 (HDD):
gp1:$0.10per GB monthst1:$0.045per GB month
But st1 volumes must be at least 500 GB.
gp1 month |
gp1 year |
st1 month |
st1 year |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 50 GB | $5 | $60 | - | - |
| 100 GB | $10 | $120 | - | - |
| 200 GB | $20 | $240 | - | - |
| 500 GB | $50 | $600 | $22.50 | $270 |
So a 100GB-gp1-year is about comparable to a t3.medium-year at spot prices.
To keep costs low but to have a reasonable set of resources for using Docker, I chose t3.medium and 100 GB of gp2 storage. See t3med_100gp2 subdirectory for that Vagrantfile.
Make note of the IP of the instance, then add the following to ~/.ssh/config:
Host percy
HostName <ip>
User ec2-user
IdentityFile ~/.aws/percy.pem
Add the following to ~/.bash_profile:
alias pe='ssh percy'
alias pes='ssh -t percy screen -r -d '
Now after starting a named screen session on percy with screen -S <name>, connect directly with pes <name>. No need to manually ssh to percy first.