Release: Amazon DevPay on 2009-02-09

With this release, Amazon DevPay now supports Windows paid AMIs in the U.S. and Linux/UNIX paid AMIs in Europe.

What does this mean for your existing paid or supported AMIs and DevPay products?

Your existing Linux/UNIX paid or supported AMIs are not affected. They will continue to operate as usual on Linux/UNIX in the United States. If you want to expand your Amazon DevPay product to cover Windows paid AMIs in the U.S. or Linux/UNIX AMIs in Europe, then you need to update the product's configuration and set prices for those instance types. Until you do that, your customers will not be able to launch instances of your Windows paid AMIs in the U.S. or Linux/UNIX AMIs in Europe. For more information, see the next item in this table.

If you decide to use Amazon DevPay to sell a Windows paid AMI, be aware that the association of the product code with a Windows AMI is permanent. Therefore, we recommend you keep a separate, base copy of the AMI that has no product code associated with it.

Also, anyone who purchases a Windows paid AMI can rebundle it, and the product code is automatically transferred to the rebundled AMI. When Amazon EC2 users launch instances of the rebundled AMI, they pay the rates you set when you registered your DevPay product. In turn, you're charged for the Amazon EC2 costs they incur. For more information about how to create and bundle Windows AMIs, go to Feature Guide: Amazon EC2 Running Windows. Note that Amazon EC2 currently does not support Windows AMIs in Europe.

If you decide to use Amazon DevPay to sell an AMI in a region other than the U.S. (e.g., Europe), be aware that you need to create a separate version of your AMI to upload to Amazon S3 in that region. The basic process is as follows:

1. Create your Amazon S3 bucket in Europe if you haven't already.
2. Copy your AMI from your Amazon S3 bucket in the U.S. to your bucket in Europe using the ec2-migrate-bundle command (part of the Amazon EC2 AMI tools).
3. Register the AMI using the Amazon EC2 RegisterImage API.
4. If the DevPay product code is not bundled into the manifest of your AMI, reassociate the product code with the AMI in Europe using the Amazon EC2 ModifyImageAttribute API.

For more information about setting up AMIs in different regions, go to Feature Guide: Amazon EC2 Regions.

With this release, you can now select which Amazon EC2 regions, environments (Linux/UNIX, Windows), or instance types your product supports. For example, you could configure a DevPay product to work only with specific types of Windows instances, or Europe AMI instances. AWS allows your customers to launch only the instance types the product is configured for. The details are discussed in Your Product's Configuration and Price in the Amazon DevPay Developer Guide.

When you configure a new product (as part of product registration or as part of a price change), you select which regions, environments, etc., you want the product to support. You also provide prices for those supported regions, environments, etc. In the paid AMI scenario, you then associate the product code with AMIs that match the product's configuration, and you make those AMIs available for sale. When you associate the product code with the AMI, we do a preliminary check to confirm the AMI matches the product's configuration. At launch time, we do a complete check to confirm the instance matches the product's configuration. As the product owner, you're allowed to associate the product code with an AMI that doesn't match the product's configuration, but no one (including you) can launch an instance that doesn't match a product's configuration.

In the supported AMI scenario (where you let your customers associate your product code with their AMIs), this new product configuration feature prevents your customers from using your product code with AMIs or instance types the product doesn't support. For example, if your product is designed only for Windows AMIs, then you only want your customers to associate your product code with Windows AMIs. We do a preliminary check when the your customer associates the product code with the AMI, and then a complete check when anyone launches an instance of the AMI.

At any time, you can update a product's configuration to either add or remove support for different AMI types or instance types. For example, any DevPay product you registered before this release is automatically configured only for Linux/UNIX AMIs in the United States. However, you could update the product to also support Windows AMIs in the U.S. or Linux/UNIX AMIs in Europe, or to no longer support certain instance types. For more information, go to Changing a Product's Configuration in the Amazon DevPay Developer Guide. We also recommend you understand the implications of selling multiple AMI types under the same product code versus different product codes. For more information, go to Selling Multiple AMIs in the Amazon DevPay Developer Guide.