AWS EC2 Spot Instance Provisioner

About

The scripts in scripts provision an EC2 spot instance in Ohio (which generally has the lowest costs of all the EC2 spot instances in the US) running Amazon Linux 2022. They:

1. Create a RAM-disk using TMPFS at /nix
2. Install nix (so it lives on the RAM-disk)
3. Enable nix's experimental features and unfree packages
4. Install htop and git with nix profile
5. Create a RAM-disk using TMPFS in the home directory

The scripts create logs of these actions.

The scripts should be run from the root directory (i.e., ./scripts/build-instance.sh)

If a script were to fail, it should destroy the infrastructure it provisioned to avoid excess bills.

I am not responsible for any costs incurred through the use of these scripts.

Note on testing NixOS modules

Testing NixOS modules requires the use of /dev/kvm, which are only available on instance_types ending in .metal. If you wish to test NixOS modules, you can use ./scripts/own-instance-kvm.sh to set the proper permissions after running ./scripts/build-instance.sh, but you must make sure to change ./terraform/terraform.tfvars.

Usage

Hop into a new shell with the tools you'll need by running nix develop.

Create the instance with ./scripts/build-instance.sh. The script ends by printing the command to connect to the instance.

Destroy the instance with ./scripts/destroy-instance.sh.