EC2 instance launched at terminated state

Question

I am using AWS for the first time. I created an EC2 instance. I chose the "Launch Configuration" as Ubuntu Server 12.04.1 LTS.

But after launching it, the state is "terminated".

Following is showed in the description:

State Transition Reason: Server.InternalError: Internal error on launch

What could be the reason behind it and how can i run the instance?

Answer 1

The reason is that there was an internal error (meaning, not anything you caused). Since it's terminated, you can't use it, it no longer really exists. Just launch a new instance.

If this problem keeps happening, there's something more serious happening. But that's unlikely. I find transient problems like this happen once in a while, maybe one time out of a hundred. You just got unlucky on your first try.

Answer 2

This error can also error if you have a block device name that AWS does not expect. In my case I was trying xvdc but it wanted sdc. YMMV.