How to create an Amazon Machine Image

Essential AWS Tutorial: How to Create an AMI from Your EC2 Instance (Snapshot Your Server!)

Hey Tech Fans! Darren here, and today we’re diving into one of the most fundamental and valuable concepts in Amazon Web Services: creating an Amazon Machine Image (AMI).

If you’ve ever needed to quickly back up a finely tuned server, create a standard template for new deployments, or migrate your instance configuration effortlessly, the AMI is your best friend. Think of it as a complete, ready-to-launch snapshot of your EC2 instance—operating system, application data, and all!

In this practical, step-by-step guide, we will walk through the entire process, ensuring you can quickly and confidently turn your running EC2 server into a reusable template. Let’s dive in!

Prerequisites for This Tutorial

Before we get started, make sure you have the following ready to go in your AWS Management Console:

• An active AWS Account.
• A running EC2 instance that you wish to image (this is the source server).
• The necessary IAM permissions to stop instances and create images.

Understanding the AWS AMI: Why Snapshots are Crucial

An Amazon Machine Image (AMI) is a special type of virtual appliance template. When you launch a new EC2 instance, you are always launching it from an AMI (like the standard Amazon Linux or Ubuntu images).

By creating a custom AMI from your existing instance, you achieve several key benefits:

1. Disaster Recovery: If your running instance fails, you have an immediate restore point ready to launch in minutes.
2. Standardized Deployments: Ensure every new instance you launch (for scaling or testing) is identical to your gold standard server.
3. Faster Scale-Out: Instead of provisioning a new server and manually installing software, you can launch a fully configured server from your AMI almost instantly.

The process is incredibly simple: we stop the instance, create the image, and then we are ready to launch!

Step 1: Preparing Your EC2 Instance for Imaging

To ensure your AMI is a consistent and reliable snapshot of your data, it is critical that we put the EC2 instance into a stable state first. While AWS can create an AMI from a running instance (by choosing the ‘No reboot’ option), the best practice for data integrity is to stop the machine entirely.

Here’s how to prepare your instance:

1. Navigate to the EC2 Dashboard: In the AWS Management Console, go to the EC2 service section.
2. Select Your Target Instance: Locate the running instance you want to create the AMI from and click to select it.
3. Stop the Instance: Click on the Instance State dropdown menu (or the Actions menu), and select Stop instance.
   • A quick note from Darren: This ensures the operating system is completely quiescent, meaning no data is being written to the underlying EBS volumes during the imaging process, preventing corruption or inconsistency in your snapshot.
4. Wait for the Instance State to change from stopping to stopped. This should only take a moment or two.

Step 2: Creating Your Amazon Machine Image

With our instance safely stopped, we can now instruct AWS to generate the full machine image.

1. Select the Stopped Instance: Ensure your target EC2 instance is still selected in the dashboard.
2. Access the Image Creation Menu: Click on the Actions dropdown menu.
3. Hover over Image and templates.
4. Click Create image.

You will now be presented with the “Create image” configuration page. Fill out the following details:

1. Image Name: Give your AMI a clear, descriptive name (e.g., WebApp_Production_Backup_20231026).
2. Image Description: Add details about the image contents (e.g., “AMI for Production Web App, OS: Ubuntu 20.04, includes Apache and custom scripts.”).
3. No Reboot Option: Leave this option checked. Since we manually stopped the instance, this guarantees the image creation won’t attempt to reboot the server again.
4. EBS Volume Details: Review the root volume details. By default, AWS will automatically create snapshots of the attached EBS volumes and associate them with your new AMI.

Once satisfied with the settings, click the Create image button.

Step 3: Verifying and Launching from the New AMI

The image creation process is now running in the background. It takes time depending on the size of your server’s root volume (the larger the volume, the longer the snapshot takes).

1. Track the AMI Status: In the left navigation panel of the EC2 Dashboard, under the Images section, click on AMIs.
2. Wait for Availability: Locate your newly named AMI. Initially, the Status will show as pending. Wait until the status changes to available.
3. Launch a New Instance (Test Run): Once the AMI is available, you can immediately use it to spin up a new, identical instance.
   • Select your new AMI in the list.
   • Click Actions.
   • Select Launch instance from AMI.
   • Complete the standard EC2 launch wizard (choose instance type, security groups, key pair, etc.).

If your test launch is successful, congratulations! You have successfully created a standardized, recoverable server template. You can now start and re-use your original instance, or you may safely terminate it knowing that its image has been preserved in the AMI.

Wrap Up: Your Server Template is Ready!

That’s all there is to it! In just a few simple steps—stopping the instance, creating the image, and waiting for the snapshot to complete—you’ve mastered the process of creating an Amazon Machine Image. This skill is absolutely foundational for robust, scalable cloud deployments.

Now it’s your turn to jump into the AWS console and start practicing this technique!

If this tutorial helped you snapshot your server and streamline your AWS workflow, please give this video a thumbs-up and subscribe to Darren’s Tech Tutorials for more clear, accessible cloud guides.

Happy imaging, and I’ll catch you in the next tutorial!