EC2CreateInstanceOperator could leave EC2 instances running when failing#60904
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vincbeck merged 1 commit intoapache:mainfrom Jan 22, 2026
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…ures occurred after successful instance creation (e.g. waiter failures due to missing DescribeInstances permissions). This change adds best-effort cleanup when post-creation steps fail by attempting to terminate created instances. Cleanup errors are logged but do not mask the original exception. Tests cover successful cleanup on failure and ensure cleanup failures do not override the original error.
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…ures (apache#60904) occurred after successful instance creation (e.g. waiter failures due to missing DescribeInstances permissions). This change adds best-effort cleanup when post-creation steps fail by attempting to terminate created instances. Cleanup errors are logged but do not mask the original exception. Tests cover successful cleanup on failure and ensure cleanup failures do not override the original error. Co-authored-by: Sameer Mesiah <smesiah971@gmail.com>
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…ures (apache#60904) occurred after successful instance creation (e.g. waiter failures due to missing DescribeInstances permissions). This change adds best-effort cleanup when post-creation steps fail by attempting to terminate created instances. Cleanup errors are logged but do not mask the original exception. Tests cover successful cleanup on failure and ensure cleanup failures do not override the original error. Co-authored-by: Sameer Mesiah <smesiah971@gmail.com>
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…ures (apache#60904) occurred after successful instance creation (e.g. waiter failures due to missing DescribeInstances permissions). This change adds best-effort cleanup when post-creation steps fail by attempting to terminate created instances. Cleanup errors are logged but do not mask the original exception. Tests cover successful cleanup on failure and ensure cleanup failures do not override the original error. Co-authored-by: Sameer Mesiah <smesiah971@gmail.com>
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Description
Added best-effort cleanup to
EC2CreateInstanceOperatorto ensure EC2 instances are terminated when failures occur after successful instance creation.Previously, the operator could create an EC2 instance via
RunInstancesand then fail during post-creation steps (for example, when waiting for the instance withwait_for_completion=TrueandDescribeInstancespermissions are missing). In these cases, the task failed while leaving the EC2 instance running.The operator now attempts to terminate any created instances if an exception is raised after instance creation. Cleanup is performed opportunistically and does not mask or replace the original exception if termination fails.
Rationale
EC2CreateInstanceOperatormanages the lifecycle of an external infrastructure resource. If instance creation succeeds but subsequent steps fail, leaving the instance running is both surprising and potentially costly.Failures after instance creation can occur for multiple reasons, including IAM permission errors (for example, missing
DescribeInstances) as well as loss of access to observability or metadata systems used during task execution. In all of these cases, the operator has failed to complete successfully from Airflow’s perspective, and execution state may no longer be reliable.Attempting best-effort cleanup in these scenarios avoids leaving unmanaged EC2 instances running when the task itself has failed, and aligns with the behavior of other Airflow operators that manage external resources. Cleanup failures are logged and do not mask the original exception, preserving existing failure semantics while improving safety.
Tests
Backwards Compatibility
No changes to the public API or operator parameters.
Closes: #60903