Our vpc quota was taken down to 1 from 5 and now we cannot even start our production environmet

Question

Hello, we maintain a web application and we have a fairly minimal stack:
1. 1 RDS cluster with 1 instance (Serverless v2, 0 - 4 ACUs)
2. 2 EC2 instances, 1 t4g.small and 1 t4g.micro

The t4g.micro is stopped atm and we need to start it as it hosts a crucial production service. When we try to start it we get the dreaded `You have requested more vCPU capacity than your current vCPU limit of 1 allows for the instance bucket that the specified instance type belongs to` message.

Checking our Service Quota, we see that it has been taken down to 1vCPU for our account (from the default of 5). Our applications to increase it all get automatically rejected. Our production environment is currently offline. We need this sorted out as soon as possible.

re:Post Agent · Answer

I understand you're facing a critical issue with your production environment due to a vCPU limit restriction. This is preventing you from starting your t4g.micro instance, which hosts a crucial production service.

The error message you're receiving indicates that your account's vCPU limit has been reduced from the default of 5 to just 1, which is why you can't start your second instance. Since you already have a t4g.small running (which uses 2 vCPUs), you've reached your current limit.

To resolve this issue, you need to request a service quota increase. Here's what you should do:

1. Go to the AWS Service Quotas console
2. Navigate to the Amazon EC2 section
3. Look for the quota related to "Running On-Demand Standard (A, C, D, H, I, M, R, T, Z) instances" which controls your vCPU limit
4. Request an increase to at least 5 vCPUs (the default) or higher based on your needs

If your automatic requests are being rejected, I strongly recommend opening a support case through the AWS Support Center Console. When creating the case:
- Select "Service Limit Increase" as the case type
- Clearly explain that this is impacting your production environment
- Mention that your limit was previously at the default of 5 vCPUs and was unexpectedly reduced to 1
- Emphasize the business impact and urgency of the situation

AWS Support can help expedite quota increase requests, especially for production-impacting issues. They can also investigate why your limit was reduced and why automatic increase requests are being rejected.  
**Sources**  
[Unable to create more than one EC 2 instance | AWS re:Post](https://repost.aws/questions/QUMjfyszsyRIuCAoAa6O9zgg/unable-to-create-more-than-one-ec-2-instance)  
[Resolve Amazon ECS service quota issues | AWS re:Post](https://repost.aws/knowledge-center/ecs-service-quotas)

Our vpc quota was taken down to 1 from 5 and now we cannot even start our production environmet

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