Can't start up an EC2 with F1 instance-type

Question

I've been wanting to explore FPGA development via the AWS FPGA Developer AMI on the marketplace.

While following through a tutorial, there came a point where I needed the instance to have a `/dev/xfpga` device on it, which I believe exists only on the `F1` instance-types.

So I turned off my EC2 instance, and tried switching the instance-type to `f1.2xlarge`. It seemed to accept the change of instance-type fine at this point.

But when I tried to right-click and 'Start Instance', I was met with an error message of:

```
Failed to start the instance i-056d8b0407f711785
The requested configuration is currently not supported. Please check the documentation for supported configurations.
```

Googling online, a few possible reasons were suggested. The one I suspect is most likely is that perhaps the F1 instance-types aren't supported in my local region (Sydney / ap-southeast-2) yet.

I do recall reading an article online that mentioned F1 instance-types only being available in US-regions:

- https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2017/11/amazon-ec2-f1-instances-are-now-available-in-aws-govcloud--us/

But that article is from 2017, and I assumed that perhaps F1 instance-types would be globally available by now, and since nothing stopped me from selecting it while in Sydney region, it added to that impression.

But anyways, thought I'd ask here, in-case anyone has any insights into this.

For my part, I will try spin up an EC2 instance in a US-region and see if I have any luck there.

Accepted Answer

Hello,

The best way to confirm an Instance type is available at any given moment in any Availability Zone; is to check the type offering (1-2) in [CloudShell](console.aws.amazon.com/cloudshell/) or anywhere where AWS CLI is deployed. The script below will provide you with the Availability Zones under ap-southeast-2 with f1.4xlarge Instances available, you can tweak it up to another Instance Type and region:

$ aws ec2 describe-instance-type-offerings --location-type "availability-zone" --filters "Name=location,Values=ap-southeast-2" --filters "Name=instance-type,Values=f1.4xlarge"

**Important: ** Keep in mind that these values fluctuate depending on demand and how AWS keeps on expanding the offers.

If your Instance is located in a different AZ, then the message output would be expected until the type offering is available in that particular Zone. I hope this helps

Have a great day!

References

1. Finding an instance type - Finding an instance type using the AWS CLI - https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/instance-discovery.html#instance-discovery-cli
2. describe-instance-type-offerings -  https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cli/latest/reference/ec2/describe-instance-type-offerings.html

Can't start up an EC2 with F1 instance-type

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