Please note that this is for EBS backed instances only. If you want something similar for ephemeral instances, do what we do: min 1 max 1 auto scaling groups.

Please note that this is for EBS backed instances only. If you want something similar for ephemeral instances, do what we do: min 1 max 1 auto scaling groups. We've found that Amazon is pretty good at catching bad instances and terminating them, although on occasion we do have to terminate an instance manually. The autoscaling group takes care of the rest.