**To move instances into standby mode** This example puts the specified instance into standby mode:: aws autoscaling enter-standby --instance-ids i-93633f9b --auto-scaling-group-name my-auto-scaling-group --should-decrement-desired-capacity The following is example output:: { "Activities": [ { "Description": "Moving EC2 instance to Standby: i-93633f9b", "AutoScalingGroupName": "my-auto-scaling-group", "ActivityId": "ffa056b4-6ed3-41ba-ae7c-249dfae6eba1", "Details": {"Availability Zone": "us-west-2a"}, "StartTime": "2015-04-12T15:10:23.640Z", "Progress": 50, "Cause": "At 2015-04-12T15:10:23Z instance i-93633f9b was moved to standby in response to a user request, shrinking the capacity from 2 to 1.", "StatusCode": "InProgress" } ] }