Q:

Unable to use Spring cloud to connect with AWS SES

I have made a very simple maven project using Spring Boot. I am trying to connect with AWS SES using Spring cloud. While running the project, I am getting following error: 
No valid instance id defined
Caused by: org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanCreationException: Error creating bean with name 'org.springframework.cloud.aws.core.env.ResourceIdResolver.BEAN_NAME': Invocation of init method failed; nested exception is org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanCreationException: Error creating bean with name 'stackResourceRegistryFactoryBean' defined in class path resource [org/springframework/cloud/aws/autoconfigure/context/ContextStackAutoConfiguration.class]: Bean instantiation via factory method failed; nested exception is org.springframework.beans.BeanInstantiationException: Failed to instantiate [org.springframework.cloud.aws.core.env.stack.config.StackResourceRegistryFactoryBean]: Factory method 'stackResourceRegistryFactoryBean' threw exception; nested exception is java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: No valid instance id defined

I am showing snippets of files in use:
pom.xml
<parent>
    <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
    <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-parent</artifactId>
    <version>2.1.3.RELEASE</version>
</parent>

<dependencies>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-web</artifactId>
        <exclusions>
            <exclusion>
                <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
                <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-tomcat</artifactId>
            </exclusion>
        </exclusions>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-mail</artifactId>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-thymeleaf</artifactId>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-actuator</artifactId>
    </dependency>

    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.springframework.cloud</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-cloud-starter-aws</artifactId>
        <version>2.1.0.RELEASE</version>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>com.amazonaws</groupId>
        <artifactId>aws-java-sdk-ses</artifactId>
        <version>1.11.505</version>
    </dependency>

    <dependency>
        <groupId>javax</groupId>
        <artifactId>javaee-web-api</artifactId>
        <version>7.0</version>
        <scope>provided</scope>
    </dependency>
</dependencies>

SimpleMailAutoConfig.java
@Configuration
public class SimpleMailAutoConfig {

    @Bean
    public AmazonSimpleEmailService amazonSimpleEmailService(AWSCredentialsProvider credentialsProvider) {
         return AmazonSimpleEmailServiceClientBuilder.standard()
            .withCredentials(credentialsProvider)
            .withRegion(Regions.US_EAST_1).build();
    }

    @Bean
    public MailSender mailSender(AmazonSimpleEmailService ses) {
        return new SimpleEmailServiceMailSender(ses);
    }
}

MailSendingService.java
@Service
public class MailSendingService {

    @Autowired
    private MailSender mailSender;

    public void sendMailMessage() {
        SimpleMailMessage simpleMailMessage = new SimpleMailMessage();
        simpleMailMessage.setFrom("foo@bar.com");
        simpleMailMessage.setTo("example@test.com");
        simpleMailMessage.setSubject("test subject");
        simpleMailMessage.setText("test content");
        this.mailSender.send(simpleMailMessage);
    }
}

Application.java
@SpringBootApplication
@ComponentScan("com.example")
public class Application extends SpringBootServletInitializer {

    @Override
    protected SpringApplicationBuilder configure(SpringApplicationBuilder  application) {
        return application.sources(Application.class);
    }

    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
        SpringApplication.run(Application.class, args);
    }
}

application.properties
cloud.aws.credentials.accessKey=${MyAccessKey}
cloud.aws.credentials.secretKey=${MySecretKey}
cloud.aws.region.static=us-east-1

I am not trying to connect to any EC2 instance. Not able to find any proper documentation for using spring cloud for SES

A:

You've almost got it, you're just missing one more configuration flag to stop that exception creeping in. 
Add cloud.aws.stack.auto = false to your application.properties file thus it will not enable the automatic stack name detection for the application. 
You can read up more about it in the docs: http://cloud.spring.io/spring-cloud-aws/spring-cloud-aws.html#_cloudformation_configuration_in_spring_boot

