CFDDFC on AWS: Service Quotas

EC2 Service Quotas

An AWS account has quotas for each AWS service which sets a limit on how much of the service can be used. CFDDFC users should be aware of quotas for EC2 service, in particular the limits on Running On-Demand Instances and Spot Instance Requests.

Quotas can be accessed in the AWS Console from the drop-down menu in the right of the menu bar (see image). Alternatively, it can be accessed directly from AWS Service Quotas. Most quotas are specific to a region, so users should select the relevant region in the Console before inspecting their quotas.

The important quotas relate to Amazon EC2, which can be selected from the Quotas page or directly from Amazon EC2 Service Quotas. The following links access quota details for Spot Instance Requests and Running On-Demand Instances. If a quota are insufficient, a user can Request a Quota Increase via the Console. Requests are processed quickly and, from our experience, generally fulfilled.

The presented quotas are the limit on total number of virtual CPUs (vCPUs) of EC2 instances which can be running at one time. For example, if the quota is 360 , then the user could run 5 × c5.18xlarge (72 vCPU) instances.

IAM Policy to View Quotas

The root user of the AWS account can view the quota information. If an IAM user needs to view the quota information, an IAM policy can be created for the purpose as follows:

• Login to the Amazon EC2 Console as the root user (or IAM user with permissions to configure IAM).
• Select IAM from Services.
• Select Policies from the left menu.
• Click Create Policy.
• Next, select the JSON Tab and paste the following to allow viewing of quota information.

{
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Sid": "CFDquotas",
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": [
                "servicequotas:GetServiceQuota",
                "servicequotas:ListServices",
                "servicequotas:ListAWSDefaultServiceQuotas",
                "servicequotas:ListServiceQuotas",
                "servicequotas:GetAWSDefaultServiceQuota"
            ],
            "Resource": "*"
        }
    ]
}

• Click Review policy.
• Enter a Name, e.g. CFDquotas and click Create policy.

IAM Permission to View Quotas

The CFDquotas policy can be attached to a user to grant them permission to view quotas. The policy can be attached by adding it to the CFDDFC group described in the User Setup. Alternatively, the policy can be applied directly to the user by the following:

• In the IAM Console, select Users from the left menu.
• Select the relevant user and, under Summary, click Add Permissions
• Select Attach Existing Policies Directly (see below), select the CFDquotas policy and click Next: Review
• Click Add permissions.

Next Step → Launch an Instance