m1.small capacity issues in use1-az6

Question

There seems to be some issue with capacity at least for m1.small instances in use1-az6 availability zone.  I had several scheduled retirements for instances, and when I went to try to start the instances again after stopping them to clear the retirement, I got InsufficientInstanceCapacity errors.  It hadn't occurred to me to create capacity reservations before, we're fairly small and have never had capacity issues before.  I have created a capacity reservation now with as many m1.small as it would let me (which is actually still fewer than are currently running).

Mainly I'm posting here to make sure folks at AWS are aware of this issue and hopefully are working to reallocate capacity to alleviate this.  I had to switch some instance types around to get my required instances running again after stopping them for the retirements, and I'd like to get them back to their proper types ASAP.  Also never know when more retirements will come in.

Answer

I can't comment on capacity issue in general but I'd note that the m1 instance types are quite old - we refer to them as "previous generation" instances. They are based on older hardware (think the underlying CPU and motherboards). And as Werner Vogels (CTO of Amazon) says "Everything fails all the time". So if hardware fails (as it appears to have done in your case) it may not be able to be replaced. As you say, more retirements may happen in the future - and this is definitely more likely as the hardware ages.

I'd strongly recommend that you move to more modern instance type. Note that you may need to update the drivers that are being used. The m1 instances have been around for more than a decade so it's definitely time for an upgrade.

m1.small capacity issues in use1-az6

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