EC2 Image Builder now supports image lifecycle management and deletion

Customers can now manage the lifecycle of their custom Amazon Machine Images (AMIs) and Container images created on EC2 Image Builder. Customers can save costs by deleting unused images that accumulate storage charges on AWS. You no longer have to keep track of their custom images distributed across AWS accounts and AWS regions, and manually retire them as the images become outdated. With this launch, we provide customers an automated way to identify and remove outdated images, avoiding accidental usage of those images. 

With this feature, you can create image lifecycle policies that keep track of your lifecycle rules and automatically move your images to the desired state: deprecate, disable, or delete. You can create a lifecycle policy with rules, such as retain a specific count of latest images, delete images older than a certain time, and skip action for images with specific tags. Once created, your lifecycle policy will run everyday to take required actions on images created and distributed through your Image Builder account. You can track logs of the lifecycle policy actions in the Console, as well as via CLI, API, CloudFormation, and CDK.

Image lifecycle management is available in all AWS Regions, excluding the AWS GovCloud (US) Regions and AWS China Regions (Beijing, operated by Sinnet), and China (Ningxia, operated by NWCD).

You can find information about image lifecycle management on the feature documentation page. Learn more about the service in the Image Builder documentation. Also, share feedback on the upcoming Image Builder features through our public roadmap.