What happens to my EC2 instance data (EBS) when I stop the instance?

Question

Initially I have created an instance and installed HTTPD package in it. Then I stopped it and later started it.

1. Public IP is changed.
2. HTTPD is still actively running.

My doubt is, with this change in Public IP was I allocated a different instance(VM) but with previous EBS? Please Help. Thankyou.

Answer 1

No, you have the same instance but when you stop it your are allocated a new public IP. If you associate an elastic IP with your instance then the IP will remain the same after a stop and restart.

Be careful on instance types that have "ephemeral" storage. That is disk space that is local to the instance. When you stop your instance your O/S is still there but the rest of the storage is new. So if you store something local it will be gone. Most smaller instances use EBS (elastic block storage) now so it's less of a problem but if it's not EBS then be careful.