Client error in boto3 request_spot_instances call

Question

I am making a call for launching spot instances. The code that I am using -

request_spot_instances(
            SpotPrice = str(price),
            ClientToken = client_token,
            InstanceCount = count,
            Type = 'one-time',
            ValidFrom = valid_from,
            ValidUntil = valid_until,
            LaunchGroup = '',
            AvailabilityZoneGroup = '',
            BlockDurationMinutes = 120,
            LaunchSpecification = {
                'ImageId': image_id,
                'KeyName': key_name,
                'SecurityGroups': security_groups,
                'UserData': user_data,
                'InstanceType': instance_type,
                'Placement' : placement,
                'BlockDeviceMappings': block_device_map,
                'SubnetId': subnet_id,
                'NetworkInterfaces': [
                    network_interface
                ],
                'IamInstanceProfile': iamprofile,
                'Monitoring': {
                    'Enabled': True
                }
            }
        )

The values of valid_from and valid_until are -

valid_from = datetime.utcnow()
valid_until = datetime.utcnow() + timedelta(minutes=10) 

I get the following error while making the call -

*** ClientError: An error occurred (InvalidTime) when calling the RequestSpotInstances operation: "Sun Dec 04 22:17:59 UTC 2016" is an invalid time

How do I resolve this error?

Answer 1

This should work:

valid_from = datetime.utcnow() + timedelta(seconds=3)
valid_until = valid_from + timedelta(minutes=10)

I ran into the same problem and I concluded that valid_from has to be "now" or somewhere in the future. By adding 2-3 seconds to your valid_from datetime it will work.