How do I create a custom AMI, launch an Amazon EC2 instance from a custom AMI, or troubleshoot AMI issues?

Resolution

Create a custom AMI from an existing instance

Prerequisites: (Windows instances only) Run System Preparation (Sysprep) to prepare the Windows installation for deployment across multiple instances. If you use EC2Launch to run Sysprep, then it's a best practice to update EC2Launch to the latest version. If you don't run Sysprep before you create the AMI, then your AMI might experience conflicts.

Create an AMI of the instance. To create an AMI of an instance with encrypted Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) snapshots, see How to create a custom AMI with encrypted Amazon EBS snapshots and share it with other AWS accounts and AWS Regions.

Launch an instance from a custom AMI

Launch your instance from the AMI.

Note: If you can't launch a specific instance type, then see Why are some instance types unavailable when I try to launch an Amazon EC2 instance from an AMI?

Share encrypted AMIs across accounts

To share an encrypted AMI, you must encrypt the AMI with a customer managed key. You can't directly share AMIs that you encrypted with an AWS managed key. Instead, you must copy the AMI, and then use a customer managed key to encrypt the new AMI.

To share encrypted AMIs across accounts, see How do I share encrypted AMIs or snapshots across accounts to launch encrypted Amazon EC2 instances?

To share AMI across Regions, see How do I create an Amazon EC2 instance AMI in one Region and then copy it to another Region? To export your AMI as a virtual machine (VM), see How do I use VM Import/Export to export an AMI of my Amazon EC2 instance as a VM?

Troubleshoot issues with instances that you launched from custom AMIs

If you experience connectivity issues, such as Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) authentication errors, then check the following settings:

• Make sure that you correctly configured the Network Level Authentication (NLA) settings.
• Make sure that your security group rules allow inbound traffic on the required ports, such as port 3389 for RDP or port 22 for SSH.
• Make sure that your network access control lists (network ACLs) don't block traffic.
• Make sure that your instance has a public IP address. Or, if it's a private instance, then make sure that the instance is accessible through a VPN or AWS Direct Connect connection.

For more troubleshooting information, see the following resources:

• Why can't I connect to my EC2 Windows instance that I launched from a custom AMI?
• Why is my AMI or EBS snapshot creation slow or stuck in the Pending state?
• Why can't I launch EC2 instances from my copied AMI?
• How do I troubleshoot an Amazon EC2 instance that stops or terminates when I try to start it with the "InternalError" or "Client.UserInitiatedShutdown" error?
  Note: "InternalError" and "Client.UserInitiatedShutdown" errors can occur if you shared an encrypted AMI across accounts.
• How do I recover an accidentally deleted AMI?
• What can I do when I can no longer select the AMI that my Amazon EC2 Windows instance uses or when I see the error "Cannot load details for ami-xxxxxx. You may not be permitted to view it."?

Related information

Amazon Machine Images in Amazon EC2

How do I create an AMI that's based on my Amazon EBS–backed EC2 instance?