EC2 MAC is stucked.

Hi,

You will not be billed for an instance that is not in running state.

You could try creating another one. I suggest you to try a different AZ if possible.

Also please check the system log under "Actions -> Monitoring and troubleshooting -> Get system log" to see if there was a clue as to why it is not booting up.

When you have a mac1.metal instance stuck with a status check failure, your best bet is to shut it down and then wait an hour. This is not a joke - this is how long it takes to reset a mac1.metal dedicated host.

After an hour passed (and don't mind the dedicated host becoming "Available" - wait the full hour), you can try again. From my experience - this will not work either: when a dedicated host is acting up, there's no saving - it will never run an instance successfully. Your best bet is to give it a couple of tries (about 2 hours of your time), then open a billing support case and ask for reimbursement - they will ask you multiple time to "shutdown your failing instances and re-launch them" or "release the dedicated host" and it will all fail, and eventually you'll be reimbursed for the dedicated host cost (but not for your time and patience).

Maybe if enough people do that, AWS will fix their systems to automatically detect and recover (or re-assign) failing dedicated mac hosts.

Update 23-04-2023:

Last week I had another of those mac1.metal issues and complained, and after a few days of "checking" I got an email explaining that :

"The dedicated host allocated to your account h-XXX did not have the latest firmware required to launch your chosen MacOS image due to incompatibility between changes to Apple’s software update process and EC2 infrastructure. Apple will be resolving this issue in an upcoming update."

I haven't needed to use another mac1.metal instance since then, but I can be hopeful that AWS has fixed all of their Mac hardware.

Update 04-05-2023:

I got an email from AWS, which seems to be addressed to anyone who was running mac1.metal instances in the last four months, notifying about the firmware update issue. According to said email, its an issue with macOS Ventura 13.3, which is supposed to be fixed in a later (unspecified) version, and the email ends with a recommendation to use an older OS to avoid the problem. 🤷