Why did my EC2 Linux instance fail a system status check?

3 minute read
0

My Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) Linux instance failed a system status check and is no longer accessible.

Short description

System status check failures indicate that there are issues with the platform that hosts your EC2 instance. If you aren't sure what type of status check failed, see View status checks.

Note: If you receive the "Instance reachability check failed" error, see How do I troubleshoot an EC2 Linux instance that failed the instance status check due to operating system issues?

Resolution

View the AWS Health Dashboard

Check the AWS Health Dashboard for service interruptions in the AWS Region where your instance is located.

Resolve system status check failures

Important: It's a best practice to create an Amazon Machine Image (AMI) as a backup of your instance before performing any operations.

You can either wait for AWS to fix the issue, or you can perform a manual stop and start on your instance. Keep in mind that a stop and start isn't equivalent to a reboot. A stop and start migrates the instance to a new, healthy host. To resolve failed system status checks, this migration is required.

Warning: Before you stop and start your instance, note these conditions:

  • Data that's stored in instance store volumes are lost when the instance is stopped. Before you stop the instance, make sure that you back up the data. Unlike Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS)-backed volumes, instance store volumes are ephemeral and don't support data persistence.
  • The static public IPv4 address that Amazon EC2 automatically assigned to the instance on launch or start changes after the stop and start. To retain a public IPv4 address that doesn't change when the instance is stopped, use an Elastic IP address.

For more information, see Stop and start your instance.

In rare circumstances, the infrastructure-layer issue prevents the underlying host from responding to stop and start API calls. This causes the instance to become "stuck" in the stopping state. If this occurs, then force the instance to stop from the Amazon EC2 console or the AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI). This action might take several minutes. For more information, see Force stop the instance.

Note: If you receive errors when running AWS CLI commands, make sure that you're using the most recent version of the AWS CLI.

Instances that support simplified automatic recovery recover failed instances by default. However, it's a best practice to configure Amazon CloudWatch action based recovery. To do this, create a CloudWatch alarm to monitor your instance. Amazon CloudWatch action based recovery automatically recovers instances that are impaired due to underlying hardware failure or other issues that require AWS involvement to repair.

Related information

Types of status checks

Why is my EC2 Linux instance unreachable and failing its status checks?

I received a notice stating that Amazon EC2 detected degradation of the underlying hardware hosting my EC2 instance. What do I need to do?

AWS OFFICIAL
AWS OFFICIALUpdated 8 months ago