Why do my #AWS EC2 spot instance requests get stuck in pending-evaluation status?

Question

When I try to launch an EC2 spot instance, the instance almost immediately goes into status = pending-evaluation and stays there indefinitely.

My bid price is far above the current spot price, and I have no trouble launching dedicated instances.

Why is this happening? Has anyone had a similar problem?

Answer 1

Can't answer the "why" but regarding "has anyone had a similar problem" - yes, many people have had this same issue over many years.

Search the AWS support forums for "pending-evaluation" and you'll have a lot of threads to read up on: https://forums.aws.amazon.com/search.jspa?mbtc=70747e76394e723be38d774e355fd542ab723cc7d767e298a5626f55fd475590&threadID=&q=%22pending-evaluation%22&objID=&userID=&dateRange=all&numResults=30&rankBy=9

Noticeably quite a few of them has had responses from AWS support stating something in the line of "we found an issue with your account, it should be fixed now". However many posts have remained unanswered so unless you're paying for support it seems you might need luck on your side to get your issues resolved.