Longer Resource IDs in 2018 for Amazon EC2, Amazon EBS, and Amazon VPC

This post contributed by Laura Thomson, Senior Product Manager for Amazon EC2.

As you start planning for the new year, I want to give you a heads up that Amazon EC2 is migrating to longer format, 17-character resource IDs. Instances and volumes currently already receive this ID format. Beginning in July 2018, all newly created EC2 resources receive longer IDs as well.

The switch-over will not impact most customers. However, I wanted to make you aware so that you can schedule time at the beginning of 2018 to test your systems with the longer format. If you have a system that parses or stores resource IDs, you may be affected.

From January 2018 through the end of June 2018, there will be a transition period, during which you can opt in to receive longer IDs. To make this easy, AWS will provide an option to opt in with one click for all regions, resources, and users. AWS will also provide more granular controls via API operations and console support. More information on the opt-in process will be sent out in January.

We need to do this given how fast AWS is continuing to grow. We will start to run low on IDs for certain resources within a year or so. In order to enable the long-term, uninterrupted creation of new resources, we need to move to the longer ID format.

The current format is a resource identifier followed by an eight-character string. The new format is the same resource identifier followed by a 17-character string. For example, your current VPCs have resource identifiers such as “vpc-1234abc0”. Starting July 2018, new VPCs will be assigned an identifier such as “vpc-1234567890abcdef0”. You can continue using the existing eight-character IDs for your existing resources, which won’t change and will continue to be supported. Only new resources will receive the 17-character IDs and only after you opt in to the new format.

For more information, see Longer EC2, EBS, and Storage Gateway Resource IDs.  If you have any questions, contact AWS Support on the community forums and via AWS Support.