I have found the culprit. When you specify the availability zone especially 1-b it is taking an inordinate amount of time (this may be needed for bandwidth and data transfer savings reasons). But if you are in an emergency where cost is not as much of an issue, then leaving the availability zone with No Preference will spawn an instance in US-East within 4-5 minutes (either from a community ami or your own custom ami). I have tested and confirmed this.
Uh, you're using spot instances. If you want to get an instance quickly, either increase the max price you're willing to pay or use a normal instance.
Increasing the max price will not speed up launching.
Sure it will, if the price you've set as max is below the current spot price, which is the only reason I can think of that would cause these kinds of delays in launching an instance.
The article shows he has a $0.050 max price during a period where the price was $0.031, for an m1.small in us-e. The current spot price is not the only reason. (Which is why the delays are strange, unknown, and frustrating.)
I've noticed they take longer than regular instances but 45min is a bit extreme. Mine seemed to average at around 2-3min last week.
Yeah I waited over 30 mins yesterday and 45 today!