h1. Automatically Shutting Down a Cluster

You can use the {{--auto-shutdown}} option to automatically terminate a cluster
at a specified number of minutes after launch. This is useful for short-lived
clusters where the jobs complete in a known amount of time.

*To configure the automatic shutdown (for example, 50 minutes after launch):*
{code}
hadoop-ec2 launch-cluster --auto-shutdown 50 my-hadoop-cluster 2
{code}

You can also use the configuration property {{auto\_shutdown}}
in the configuration file; for example, to shut down 50 minutes after launch,
you would use {{auto\_shutdown=50}}.

*To cancel the automatic shutdown:*
{code}
% hadoop-ec2 exec my-hadoop-cluster shutdown -c
% hadoop-ec2 update-slaves-file my-hadoop-cluster
% hadoop-ec2 exec my-hadoop-cluster /usr/lib/hadoop/bin/slaves.sh shutdown -c
{code}