Posted On: Mar 14, 2024

Amazon EC2 now enables you to tag your Amazon Machine Images (AMIs) when you create an AMI from an EBS snapshot, or when you copy an AMI within the same or different AWS Regions. Tags are simple key-value pairs that you can assign to AWS resources such as AMIs to easily organize, search, and identify resources, create cost allocation reports, and control access. 

Prior to today, you could only tag AMIs created from EBS snapshots or copied from existing AMIs after they were created. This led to the overhead of creating and managing custom tagging scripts, and could also lead to intermittent gaps within environments where tag-based controls are applied. Now, by tagging AMIs at creation time, you can eliminate the need to create and manage custom tagging scripts, and also enforce tag-based controls immediately when AMIs are created.

You can add tags by using the AWS CLI, SDKs, or Console. This capability is available at no additional cost in all AWS Regions, including AWS GovCloud (US) and AWS China Regions. To learn more about how to tag AMIs during creation, please visit our documentation on create an AMI from a snapshot and copy an AMI.