When you no longer need your DLAMI instance, you can stop it or terminate it on Amazon EC2 to avoid incurring unexpected charges.
If you stop an instance, you can keep it around and start it later when you want to use it again. Your configurations, files, and other non-volatile information are stored in a volume on Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3). While your instance is stopped, you incur S3 charges for retaining the volume, but you don't incur charges for compute resources. When your start the instance again, it will mount that storage volume with your data.
If you terminate an instance, it's gone, and you cannot start it again. Of course, you won't incur any more charges for the compute resources with a terminated instance. However, your data still resides on Amazon S3, and you can continue to incur S3 charges. To prevent all further charges related to your terminated instance, you must also delete the storage volume on Amazon S3. For instructions, see Terminate Amazon EC2 instances in the Amazon EC2 User Guide.
For more information about Amazon EC2 instance states, such as stopped and
terminated, see Amazon EC2 instance state
changes in the Amazon EC2 User Guide.
