AMI Lifecycle Management now available with Data Lifecycle Manager

Posted on: Nov 9, 2020

Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager (DLM) now supports the creation and retention of EBS-backed Amazon Machine Images (AMIs). In addition to defining policies that provide a simple, automated way to back up data stored on EBS volumes, you can now create policies targeting EC2 instances to create EBS-backed AMIs. With this feature, you no longer have to rely on custom scripts to manage your AMIs. Nor will you need to manually delete associated snapshots once an AMI has been de-registered.

To get started, tag your EC2 instances and start creating lifecycle policies via Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager. You may call the new APIs using the AWS Command Line Interface (CLI) tool or set policies via the AWS console. Alternatively, download the latest AWS Tools for Windows PowerShell or AWS SDK and call the APIs.

We launched DLM in July 2018 to enable automation of creation and retention of EBS volume snapshots via policies. Since then, we have made DLM easier to use and supported Disaster Recovery use cases with capabilities like additional backup intervals support and cross region copy of snapshots. Today, we extend DLM to support EBS-backed AMIs and its associated snapshots, to provide you with more flexibility and control.

Learn more about Data Lifecycle Manager here.