Autostop on Linux workspaces not "hibernating"

I'm having the same issue. I can't find any documentation that suggests hibernation (for lack of a better word, if it's not technically hibernation the marketing text seems to imply this functionality) is not supported on Amazon Linux instances of Workspaces.

When looking around I found that for EC2 instances hibernation is explicitly supported for Amazon Linux instances, but requires that the root volume has enough space to store working memory (80 GB root volume on a brand new instance, essentially nothing in memory on a standard instance with only 4 GB of memory) and the root volume must be encrypted. Initially I didn't have my root volume encrypted in Workspaces, so I just built another instance where the root volume is encrypted and I'm still not seeing hibernation. I haven't seen Workflow-specific documentation on whether this is a relevant factor.

I'm letting my Workspaces come to the "Stopped" state via autostop naturally after 1 hour rather than forcing it, but still don't see hibernation.

I'm trying to evaluate Workspaces to see if it would be a better flow for me, and hibernation was a big factor in leaning to this over other options. Explicit documentation one way or the other would have saved me a fair bit of time. For example, I also wanted to use the web client. and it took me several hours of debugging until I found mention that Amazon Linux isn't supported through the web client. Having a matrix of each operating system's supported features would have helped me immediately try to file an issue in the forums or stop looking completely.

edit:

I found this:

https://aws.amazon.com/workspaces/faqs/

Q: Will my Amazon WorkSpace running in AutoStop running mode preserve the state of applications and data when it stops?

WorkSpaces with Windows preserve the data and state of your applications when stopped. On reconnect, your Amazon WorkSpace will resume with all open documents and running programs intact. Amazon Linux WorkSpaces and Graphics enabled WorkSpaces with Windows preserve your data when stopped, and any running application sessions will be closed. On reconnect, your Amazon WorkSpace will retain your files and folders in your last saved location.

Edited by: raywhiteside on Jan 31, 2019 3:11 PM

Thanks, Ray -- that's the smoking gun. Looks like they are explicitly NOT supporting "hibernation" for Linux workspaces or Graphics workspaces... at least not yet.

This would be a great feature to have for Linux workspaces, and I hope that AWS will file this as a feature request.

In the meantime, I've set the workspace for my one user who cares a lot about this functionality to the AlwaysOn running mode, so we'll be charged the "monthly pricing" for this one user. She uses it enough of the day every day that it's arguably no more expensive to do it this way for her, but in the long run, there are other users who are lighter workspace users for whom it might make a huge price difference, so the feature would be very nice to have as we scale up to an environment where nearly every user in the company each has their own workspace, and most of these will be Linux workspaces.

Hi everyone,

We released support for hibernating Linux WorkSpaces running in AutoStop mode.

Give it a try!

Thanks,
Hassan

I noticed this and I love it, thanks so much for this feature.