Best Practices for Automating EC2 Instance Shutdowns in AWS

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Hello SAS Community,

We are in the process of moving some services to the AWS cloud and have around 8 SAS instances running. Our goal is to create an automation script to shut these instances down during off-hours to save costs.

Here are a few specific questions we have:

1. Shutdown Mechanism: When shutting down an EC2 instance using AWS commands, does it perform a graceful shutdown similar to a normal OS shutdown, or is it more like pulling the power cord?
2. Shutdown Order: Is there a best practice for the order in which to shut down and start up instances? For example, should databases be shut down last and started first?
3. Automation Tools: What are the recommended tools or methods for automating this process? We've looked into AWS Lambda and AWS Systems Manager but would appreciate guidance or examples.
4. Handling Dependencies: How do we ensure that dependent services are shut down in the correct order to prevent issues?

Here is what we are currently considering:

• Using AWS Lambda triggered by CloudWatch Events to stop instances.
• Ensuring that our shutdown sequence handles dependencies correctly (e.g., web servers -> application servers -> databases).

Any insights, best practices, or sample scripts would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advance for your help!