Is secure to delete my AMIs and Snapshots?

Question

Hello! I have 4 EC2 instances. 2 running and 2 stopped.  
  
The stopped instances is t2 micro. But, some time ago, I must to migrate to t2 small. The way is to create an image from the instance and launch a new instance with this image, BUT, change the instance type.  
  
It works fine. But I have 2 old AMIs.   
  
1) Can I delete these AMIs? I have afraid to delete these AMIs and delete the instance content too!  
  
2) I have 4 snapshots. Can I delete too? These snapshots is from the olds instances.  
  
I know: I will not to delete the volumes. Only the AMIs and snapshots.  
  
PS: Sorry my bad english. Greetings from Brazil!

Answer

Hello,  
  
Please be informed that you can directly change instance type without creating and AMI and launching another instance.  
Change instance type: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/ec2-instance-resize.html  
  
Regarding AMI and snapshots, recommendation would be to keep the latest AMI and snapshot only. AMIs also create snapshot of the instance when the AMI is created. Moreover, latest AMI has all the latest data of the server from which it was created.  
  
If the older snapshots are from different instances and you wish to keep data, please keep them all. If they are from the same instance, you can choose to keep only the latest snapshot.

Answer

Hello  
  
I would say, to be on the save side, make new snapshot and AMI from your new t2 small instance.  
1. You can delete the old AMIs.  if you are afraid that these may contain some important data, create a new instance based on them and check.  If there is data, export it and then delete the instance and amis  
  
2. same thing with snapshots.  If you try to delete a snapshot that is being used, you will get an error message  
https://aws.amazon.com/premiumsupport/knowledge-center/snapshot-in-use-error/  
  
hope this helps,  
RT

Is secure to delete my AMIs and Snapshots?

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