Problem Definition

• Elastic Image Configuration configured with 30 minute Idle Timeout
• Scheduled instance configured for Cron job every 15 minutes to ensure 'at least' X instances are available.

If when the Cron job runs on that 15-minute mark, the Agent has been Idle for 29 minutes, the agent will shut down, and be unavailable until the next Cron job runs (plus time for instance startup, custom startup script, package installation, agent startup, etc.)

Suggested Solution

When elastic agents are configured on an instance schedule, have the scheduler reset the idle timer for the agent. This way the agent will not be decommissioned until it's outside the Cron job parameters.

Or at least a way to keep a minimum number of agents online even if they are idle longer than the timeout (without having them shutdown and spin back up)

Workaround

none at this time.