AWS Lambda EC2-Instances Client Timeout Error - amazon-ec2

Question

It's very often for me to get error when trying to stop or start ec2-instances through AWS Lambda. Quite strange for me, because sometimes it works (for both start and stop ec2-instances).
The error I get is like below. When I run test on Lambda console, most of the time it successfully executed. But when I run it through AWS Event Rules (CloudWatch), it's very often the function got fail.
This is my code on line 48
[ERROR] ConnectTimeoutError: Connect timeout on endpoint URL: "https://ec2.ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/"
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/var/task/lambda_function.py", line 48, in lambda_handler
if stop_ec2_instances():
File "/var/task/lambda_function.py", line 155, in stop_ec2_instances
ec2_client.stop_instances(InstanceIds=ec2_instances)
File "/var/task/botocore/client.py", line 316, in _api_call
return self._make_api_call(operation_name, kwargs)
File "/var/task/botocore/client.py", line 621, in _make_api_call
http, parsed_response = self._make_request(
File "/var/task/botocore/client.py", line 641, in _make_request
return self._endpoint.make_request(operation_model, request_dict)
File "/var/task/botocore/endpoint.py", line 102, in make_request
return self._send_request(request_dict, operation_model)
File "/var/task/botocore/endpoint.py", line 136, in _send_request
while self._needs_retry(attempts, operation_model, request_dict,
File "/var/task/botocore/endpoint.py", line 253, in _needs_retry
responses = self._event_emitter.emit(
File "/var/task/botocore/hooks.py", line 356, in emit
return self._emitter.emit(aliased_event_name, **kwargs)
File "/var/task/botocore/hooks.py", line 228, in emit
return self._emit(event_name, kwargs)
File "/var/task/botocore/hooks.py", line 211, in _emit
response = handler(**kwargs)
File "/var/task/botocore/retryhandler.py", line 183, in __call__
if self._checker(attempts, response, caught_exception):
File "/var/task/botocore/retryhandler.py", line 250, in __call__
should_retry = self._should_retry(attempt_number, response,
File "/var/task/botocore/retryhandler.py", line 277, in _should_retry
return self._checker(attempt_number, response, caught_exception)
File "/var/task/botocore/retryhandler.py", line 316, in __call__
checker_response = checker(attempt_number, response,
File "/var/task/botocore/retryhandler.py", line 222, in __call__
return self._check_caught_exception(
File "/var/task/botocore/retryhandler.py", line 359, in _check_caught_exception
raise caught_exception
File "/var/task/botocore/endpoint.py", line 200, in _do_get_response
http_response = self._send(request)
File "/var/task/botocore/endpoint.py", line 269, in _send
return self.http_session.send(request)
File "/var/task/botocore/httpsession.py", line 287, in send
raise ConnectTimeoutError(endpoint_url=request.url, error=e)
This is my code for start & stop the instances:
Even, I already move instantiation og ec2_res ec2_client inside the function but it did not help.,
def start_ec2_instances():
try:
ec2_res = boto3.resource('ec2', region_name="ap-southeast-2")
ec2_client = boto3.client('ec2', region_name="ap-southeast-2")
ec2_client.start_instances(InstanceIds=ec2_instances)
for ec2_id in ec2_instances:
instance = ec2_res.Instance(id=ec2_id)
logger.info("Waiting instance " + ec2_id + " to start")
instance.wait_until_running()
return True
except bex.ClientError as err:
logger.error(err.response['Error']['Message'])
return False
def stop_ec2_instances():
try:
ec2_res = boto3.resource('ec2', region_name="ap-southeast-2")
ec2_client = boto3.client('ec2', region_name="ap-southeast-2")
ec2_client.stop_instances(InstanceIds=ec2_instances)
for ec2_id in ec2_instances:
instance = ec2_res.Instance(id=ec2_id)
logger.info("Waiting instance " + ec2_id + " to stop")
instance.wait_until_stopped()
return True
except bex.ClientError as err:
logger.error(err.response['Error']['Message'])
return False
If any one of you ever face the same guys?
Thanks
Edit: I set function timeout to 8 minutes. In normal condition, time required to execute the function is less than 5 minutes.
Additional note:
Sometimes I work using VPN (south-east-2) in which this VPN is in a different region from the region I live. Instances (and another components) also deployed on this region VPN (south-east-2).

Answer 1

Your code to start and stop the instance looks right to me. The timeout is happening because the time taken to perform your operation is not getting completed in the configured timeout for your lambda function.
You can measure what is the time taken for your function by simply subtracting the time between start and stop of the function.
The default timeout is 3 seconds. So you should consider increasing this timeout interval for your lambda function. Say to 5 minutes.
Please note that the maximum value for this timeout is 300 seconds(15 minutes) and you can not configure value higher than this. I am sure the above code would complete within that limit and hence it should not be a problem for you.
How do I increase my timeout interval for my lambda function?
There are multiple ways to do this. By AWS CLI, AWS console, or probably some other way.
In AWS Console you can do like this:
Click on the Save button after doing this change.
Hope this helps.