How to find exact stopped time of AWS EC2 instances

Question

HI,

I really need to know about the stopped time of AWS EC2 instances. I have checked with AWS cloudtrail, but its not easy to find my problems. Is possible to see exact time of stopped EC2 instances by aws-cli commands or any boto3 script?

Kindly give me example with screenshot.

Answer 1

Hi@Lakshminarayanan,

You can use InstanceState Data Types in your AWS CLI command. You need to create your own customized command to meet your requirement. I found one command. Try to use the below command. It may help.

$ aws ec2 describe-instances --region us-west-2 --filters "Name=instance-state-code,Values=80" --query 'Reservations[].Instances[].[Tags[?Key==`Name`] | [0].Value, PrivateIpAddress, State.Name, StateTransitionReason]' --output table | sort -k 6,6 

Comments

Hi @MD,

many thanks, I have tried same commands to check. But it doesn't shown stopped time of EC2 instances. I have attached screenshot.  What should i add in aws-cli commands to see exact time of EC2 stopped.

                   DescribeInstances
|  None                      |  172.31.3.250  |  stopped |  User initiated

|  None                      |  172.31.38.135 |  stopped |  User initiated

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Hi,

Remove the pipe and try once. If possible paste your output here.

---

aws ec2 describe-instances --region ap-south-1 --filters "Name=instance-state-code,Values=80" --query 'Reservations[].Instances[].[Tags[?Key==`Name`] | [0].Value, PrivateIpAddress, State.Name, StateTransitionReason]' --output table
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|                                          DescribeInstances                                          |
+----------------------------+----------------+----------+--------------------------------------------+
|  None                      |  172.31.42.234 |  stopped |  User initiated                            |
|  None                      |  172.31.44.224 |  stopped |  User initiated                            |
|  None                      |  172.31.38.135 |  stopped |  User initiated                            |

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Hi,

Do one thing, first run the aws ec2 describe-instances command. And find the key that shows the time. Is it StateTransitionReason?

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Hi,

If i run simple describe ec2 instances, then i got details like Launch time and etc., But i dont get stopped time. How do i get stopped time of ec2 instances? bro

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Hi,

Did you try with Cloudtrail? Generally, it holds this information. Just check the below steps once.

1. Go to your Cloudtrail console and there, you will see a list of your EC2 Actions.

2. Click on StopInstances

Under EventTime, you can see both the date and time of your stopped instance.