EC2 instance changed public IP address. Can I get the old IP address back again?

Question

My Amazon EC2 instance was running for the past 3 months.

For some reason, the instance was stopped and started. This caused the instance to change its Public IP address. Can I get the same IP address back again for the instance?

Answer 1

You can't get your previous IP back. By default IP provided by AWS is temporary and changes after each restart of an instance.

To overcome this issue, you should get Elastic IP for your instance. It is static IP address which will persist between instance stops and starts. Elastic IP is free for as long as it is attached to a running instance:

To ensure efficient use of Elastic IP addresses, we impose a small hourly charge if an Elastic IP address is not associated with a running instance, or if it is associated with a stopped instance or an unattached network interface.