Is there a way to know if my VM on AWS is now running on a different hardware after a stop and start using the aws cli tool?
Stopping and starting (not rebooting) should force a hardware switch
What happens when you start an instance
When you start an instance, changes are registered at the instance level.
When you start an EC2 instance, the following occurs:
In most cases, the instance is migrated to a new underlying host computer (though in some cases, such as when an instance is allocated to a host in a Dedicated Host configuration, it remains on the current host).
Amazon EC2 assigns a new public IPv4 address to the instance if the instance is configured to receive a public IPv4 address. To retain a public IPv4 address that never changes, you can associate an Elastic IP address with your instance.
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/Stop_Start.html
Thank you Tim but is there a way to see the new hardware or to tell now is running on a different hardware?
I think probably not, I doubt they want customers to be able to map their physical infrastructure unless they’re using dedicated hardware, it could make some types of virtual machine neighbor attacks easier to pull off or target specific customers. If you’re worried about issues with the physical hardware and trying to rule out issues caused by it, you might look into this feature. It can at least let you know your instances are running on different hardware and give you some control over how your instances are physically separated or clustered
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/placement-groups.html|https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/placement-groups.html
Here’s all the info you can get about your instance that’s not a metric
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cli/latest/reference/ec2/describe-instances.html|https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cli/latest/reference/ec2/describe-instances.html
