How do I create, launch an instance from, or troubleshoot a custom Amazon Machine Image (AMI)?

Last updated: 2021-07-23

AMIs are archival copies of instances that you can use to launch other instances. You can use custom AMIs in multiple scenarios based on your specific use case.

For information on creating a custom AMI, see the following:

• Create a custom Windows AMI
• Create an AMI (Linux)
• How do I create an AMI that's based on my Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS)-backed EC2 instance?
• How to create a custom AMI with encrypted Amazon EBS snapshots and share it with other accounts and Regions
• How can I use Sysprep to create and install custom reusable Windows AMIs?

For more information, see How do I launch an EC2 instance from a custom Amazon Machine Image (AMI)?

For information on sharing a custom AMI, see the following:

• How do I create and copy an Amazon Machine Image (AMI) from one AWS Region to another?
• How do I share an Amazon Machine Image (AMI) privately with another AWS account?
• How do I transfer an Amazon EC2 instance or AMI to a different AWS Account?
• How to share encrypted AMIs across accounts to launch encrypted EC2 instances
• How do I use VM Import/Export to export a VM based on my Amazon Machine Image (AMI)?

For information on troubleshooting AMIs, see the following:

• Why can't I connect to my Amazon EC2 Windows instance that was launched from a custom AMI?
• Why is my EC2 AMI or EBS snapshot creation slow?
• Why can’t I launch EC2 instances from my copied AMI?
• How can I recover an accidentally deleted AMI?
• Why are some instance types disabled when I'm trying to launch an EC2 instance from an AMI?
• What can I do when the AMI that my EC2 instance uses is no longer public or when I see the error "Cannot load details for ami-xxxxxx. You may not be permitted to view it."?