how to stop EC2 instances with windows command line?

Question

I tried to do the following:

1. Download: client EC2 in https://aws.amazon.com/developertools/351 . And save that in C:/AWS/CLI.

2. Create in the environment variables, a new system variable.

   • Name: JAVA_HOME
   • Value: C:\\Program Files\\Java\\jre7

3. Create other new system variable.

   • Name: EC2_HOME
   • Value: C:\\AWS\\CLI

4. Edit the value of the system variable Path , and add %EC2_HOME%\\bin .

5. Create other two system variables:

   • System variable name: AWS_ACCESS_KEY , value: my access key.
   • System variable name: AWS_SECRET_KEY , value: my secret key.

6. Open my windows command line and execute the code:

    ec2-stop-instances <id_instancia> –region <region> 

I received the error:

the filename, directory name or volume label syntax is incorrect.

Why does this happen?

Answer 1

Those API tools look somewhat old.

These days, it is recommended to use either:

• AWS Command-Line Interface (CLI) (Windows, Mac, Linux)
• AWS Tools for Windows PowerShell (Windows only)

If you like PowerShell, use that one. Otherwise, go for the AWS CLI. There is good documentation for both.

Answer 2

There's an extremely easy way to stop the instance from the instance's cmd, that is

shutdown /s

That will shutdown (and stop, not terminate) the EC2