Lost my work after my existing VM expired after the 7-day period

Unfortunately, once a VM has expired or been terminated, recovering the data becomes challenging and depends on whether you had any backup mechanisms in place.

For AWS environments like the L3 Workshop, when a VM or instance expires, the data is typically not automatically preserved unless specific backup configurations were set up beforehand.

Here are some potential steps you might try:

1. Check if you're in the correct region: Sometimes resources appear to be missing because you're viewing the wrong AWS region. Verify you're looking in the same region where your previous VM was located.

2. Contact workshop support: Reach out to the L3 Workshop administrators or AWS support to see if they can assist with recovery or provide guidance specific to the workshop environment.

3. Check for any backups: If you had set up any backup processes or saved your work to persistent storage like S3, you might be able to recover from there.

4. For AppStream environments: If you're using AppStream 2.0, ensure you're using the exact same User ID when generating a new streaming URL. Different User IDs create entirely new instances without your previous data.

To prevent this issue in the future:

• Save your work frequently to persistent storage
• Export important projects or components regularly
• Document your progress and steps taken
• Be mindful of VM expiration periods and extend them when needed

If this is specifically for the AWS Blu Age L3 Workshop, also check if your project might still exist in a different region, as some users have reported finding their work after switching back to their original region.
Sources
instances disappear | AWS re:Post
Is it possible to restore a deleted EC2 instance or snapshot from Lifecycle Backup | AWS re:Post
AWS BluAge AppStream - workspace folder disappeared due to streaming URL expired | AWS re:Post
AWS Blu Age L3 Workshop - the entire project in Codebase and Transformation Center gets lost intermittently | AWS re:Post