aws_instance should allow to specify the instance state

[FlorinAndrei]

Terraform Version

Terraform v0.6.16

Affected Resource(s)

• aws_instance

There seems to be no way to specify the instance state in a template. I would like to be able to do something like this:

resource "aws_instance" "web" {
    ami = "ami-408c7f28"
    instance_type = "t1.micro"
    state = "stopped"
#    state = "running"
    tags {
        Name = "HelloWorld"
    }
}

The default value for state should be "running".

Use case: Terraform is great for creating / destroying test or development environments quickly (semi-temporary environments). But sometimes creating an environment may include a long initial step, like importing a DB from backups. If that's the case, I don't want to create the environment every morning, wait for DB to be imported, and then destroy it in the evening.

Instead, I want to create the environment today, in the morning, and wait for the DB import once. Then, at the end of the day, turn off all instances and go home. That could be accomplished by specifying the state for all instances in a global variable, and changing that variable from "running" to "stopped", then run terraform apply.

Then the next morning I'll just change the state back to "running", run terraform apply and have the environment up and running very quickly. The initial DB import would not have to be performed again every day. This would save a lot of time in such cases.

[kamaltherocky]

+1 , we have a similar use case to shutdown instances when they are not used. currently we are doing it outside of terraform through SDK. it would be good if terraform can support it

[FlorinAndrei]

Don't know if it makes a difference, but for my use case it's okay if state is not supported for instances being newly created. I've never had a case where an instance had to be created directly in the "stopped" state - I'm not even sure if the cloud API supports that, and I don't care TBH.

However, the state semantics become important for instances that are already created, and I just want to modify their state - flipping back and forth between running and stopped.

Hope that clarifies the use case I'm thinking about.

[eedwardsdisco]

@FlorinAndrei is correct that the underlying API does not support requesting an instance in a 'stopped' state. [RunInstances]

[Deserved]

+1 The over use cases can be:

• I have instance that I want to use 1-2 times a month for high load operations
• I have instances that I do not want to run (cost save), but I want to have them for a rollback plan.

[clstokes]

Related to #1579.

[ghost]

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