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I'm looking for a simple (hopefully existing) solution to allow my sales guys to spin up EC2 instances for sales demos. I have an AMI setup, so the mechanics are in place. However, the AWS console is a little too complicated for my guys, even if I created a role with relevant permissions only. The launch template also sounded promising.

Here's what it boils down to:

  • Allow sales guy to start new EC2 instance and get public IP. Basically, press a button.
  • Auto-terminate instance after set time (a few hours at most). Have not figured out how this will be implemented yet. Maybe tell the Windows instance to shut down after set time and terminate it.

I was initially thinking of creating a web interface for this but it seems like overkill for what I believe is a very common thing. It's basically just providing an interface that's simple enough for non-technical users. The browser SDK also crossed my mind but haven't looked into it yet.

Appreciate any recommendations for what approach to take.

Hank
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    How about a [PowerShell script](https://aws.amazon.com/powershell/) that starts an instance and then opens an RDP connection to it? It could be a shortcut on their desktop. And you can set the instance to terminate when the OS shuts down. – Michael Hampton Aug 06 '18 at 16:00
  • Do you use something like jenkins? You can create a job to do this and use environment variables passed in by the non-technical user to run deployments. – QuentinMoss Aug 06 '18 at 16:33
  • @QuentinMoss no I don't use Jenkins, but I'd be interested to see how something like this is implemented. Would it be worthwhile to start using Jenkins for this purpose only? – Hank Aug 07 '18 at 20:10
  • @MichaelHampton thanks for the idea! That is certainly an easy option if we can make it future-proof in not having to update the script if the underlying AMI or some other piece of info changes. – Hank Aug 07 '18 at 20:12

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