If I stop an EC2 instance, rather than terminate, will this image be saved in my account and be available to be used at a later stage? As I noticed terminated instances eventually disappear, would a stopped instance be available to boot up and start when ever?
Also regarding charging, I assume the cost for having a stopped instance would be charged per GB similar to a custom AMI?
Also, if I shutdown a machine over SSH or via a script, does this initiate a termination or just a stop an instance (I assume it terminates the instance)?
If you terminate the EBS backed instance, it will remove it from the list of running instance, including it's allocated EBS volume. Unless you set the instance attribute not to delete the volume.
If you only stop, it will changed to stopped status and you can start it again later.
If you shutdown a machine, it default's to stop.
A good read to protect your instance see: http://alestic.com/2010/01/ec2-instance-locking