How to handle an unresponsive AWS EC2 server?

AWS EC2 server becomes unresponsive due to several reasons. We need to know the scenarios to handle it properly.

1. An AWS EC2 server becomes unresponsive when the load is more than 100% for a very long time. It can happen because of the abnormality in the app/database/web services you deployed on the AWS EC2 server. You cannot connect to AWS EC2 server via SSH during this time.
2. Mostly, AWS migrates your EC2 virtual machine server from one hardware rack to another without notifying you. The AWS EC2 server becomes unresponsive (5-10 minutes) on that time and then comes back online. Sometimes, it won’t come back online at all. I’ve been a victim of this scenario numerous times. I used to contact their staffs and officials to get support. Most of the time, I get one line answer from them, that is a hardware failure.

An AWS EC2 server stops responding if one of the mentioned situations occurs. Now, let’s learn how to handle such scenarios.

1. Go to AWS EC2 management console and try rebooting the server, if you know the AWS EC2 server stopped responding because of overload. If a reboot didn’t work, try stopping the AWS EC2 server and wait for some time. Then, try starting it again. It is the only way to bring back an overloaded AWS EC2 server to online.
2. If AWS migrated your EC2 server from one hardware rack to another, it comes online in 5-10 minutes. If the AWS EC2 server hasn’t come online, you can do nothing about it, but contact AWS customer support. Make sure to design your production infrastructure to withstand such failures.

At SloopStash, we run SloopEngine on AWS cloud with perfect Multi-Pod architecture. SloopEngine is a cloud-based SaaS product which offers key features such as server-backed online IDE, project management, centralized SSH key management, server access control, SSH logging & auditing, live SSH auditing, activity tracking, live chat, and more for tech teams.

Hope it helps. Thank you.