Document History

New Tags pane

2013-02-01

Added information about the new Tags pane in the Amazon EC2 console. For more information, see Tagging Your Amazon EC2 Resources.

New Amazon Linux AMI release

2013-02-01

Added information about the release of Amazon Linux AMI 2013.03. For more information, see Amazon Linux AMIs.

Support for additional EBS-optimized instance types

2013-02-01

The following instance types can now be launched as EBS-optimized instances: High-CPU Extra Large (c1.xlarge), High-Memory Double Extra Large (m2.2xlarge), M3 Extra Large (m3.xlarge), and M3 Double Extra Large (m3.2xlarge).

For more information, see EBS-Optimized Instances.

Copy an AMI from one region to another

2013-02-01

You can copy an AMI from one region to another, enabling you to launch consistent instances in more than one AWS region quickly and easily.

For more information, see Copying AMIs.

Launch instances into a default VPC

2013-02-01

Your AWS account is capable of launching instances into either the EC2-Classic or EC2-VPC platform, or only into the EC2-VPC platform, on a region-by-region basis. If you can launch instances only into EC2-VPC, we create a default VPC for you. When you launch an instance, we launch it into your default VPC, unless you create a nondefault VPC and specify it when you launch the instance.

For more information, see Supported Platforms.

High-memory cluster (cr1.8xlarge) instance type

2012-12-01

Have large amounts of memory coupled with high CPU and network performance. These instances are well suited for in-memory analytics, graph analysis, and scientific computing applications. For more information, see Instance Families and Types.

High storage (hs1.8xlarge) instance type

2012-12-01

High storage instances provide very high storage density and high sequential read and write performance per instance. They are well-suited for data warehousing, Hadoop/MapReduce, and parallel file systems. For more information, see High Storage Instances.

EBS snapshot copy

2012-12-01

You can use snapshot copies to create backups of data, to create new Amazon EBS volumes, or to create Amazon Machine Images (AMIs). For more information, see Copying an Amazon EBS Snapshot.

Updated EBS metrics and status checks for Provisioned IOPS volumes

2012-10-01

Updated the EBS metrics to include two new metrics for Provisioned IOPS volumes. For more information, see Monitoring Volumes with CloudWatch. Also added new status checks for Provisioned IOPS volumes. For more information, see Monitoring Volumes with Status Checks.

Support for Microsoft Windows Server 2012

2012-10-01

Amazon EC2 now provides you with several pre-configured Windows Server 2012 AMIs. These AMIs are immediately available for use in every Region and for every 64-bit instance type. The AMIs support the following languages:

For more information, see Windows Instance Types.

Linux Kernels

Updated AKI IDs; reorganized distribution kernels; updated PVOps section.

2012-10-01

Added information to Adding Packages and the location of the latest Linux AMIs. For more information, see Adding Packages.

31 October 2012

Amazon EC2 Spot Instance Request Status

2012-10-01

Added information about Amazon EC2 Spot Instance request status, which makes it easy to determine the state of your Amazon EC2 Spot requests.

New Amazon Linux AMI release

2012-08-15

Added information about the release of Amazon Linux AMI 2012.09. For more information, see Amazon Linux AMIs.

11 September 2012

Provisioned IOPS (input/output operations per second) for Amazon EBS

2012-07-20

Provisioned IOPS volumes deliver predictable, high performance for I/O intensive workloads, such as database applications, that rely on consistent and fast response times. For more information, see EBS Volume Types.

31 July 2012

High I/O instances for Amazon EC2

2012-06-15

High I/O instances provides very high, low latency, disk I/O performance using SSD-based local instance storage. For more information, see High I/O Instances.

18 July 2012

IAM roles on Amazon EC2 instances

2012-06-01

IAM roles for Amazon EC2 provide:

Spot Instance features that make it easier to get started and handle the potential of interruption.

Using Auto Scaling, you can now manage your Spot Instances:

EC2 instance export and timestamps for status checks for Amazon EC2

2012-05-01

Added support for exporting Windows Server instances that you originally imported into EC2.

Added support for timestamps on instance status and system status to indicate the date and time that a status check failed.

EC2 instance export, and timestamps in instance and system status checks for Amazon VPC

2012-05-01

Added support for EC2 instance export to Citrix Xen, Microsoft Hyper-V, and VMware vSphere.

Added support for timestamps in instance and system status checks.

Cluster Compute Eight Extra Large instances

2012-04-01

Added support for cc2.8xlarge instances in Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC).

AWS Marketplace AMIs

2012-04-01

Added support for AWS Marketplace AMIs.

New Linux AMI release

Added information about the release of Amazon Linux AMI 2012.03. For more information, see Amazon Linux AMIs.

New AKI version

Added information about the release of new AKI version 1.03 and the release of AKIs for the AWS GovCloud (US) region. For more information, see Enabling Your Own Linux Kernels .

Medium instances, support for 64-bit on all AMIs, and a Java-based SSH Client

Added support for a new instance type and 64-bit information. Added procedures for using the Java-based SSH client to connect to Linux/UNIX instances.

Reserved Instance pricing tiers

Added a new section discussing how to take advantage of the discount pricing that is built into the Reserved Instance pricing tiers. For more information, see Understanding Reserved Instance pricing tiers.

Elastic Network Interfaces (ENIs) for EC2 instances in Amazon Virtual Private Cloud

Added new section about elastic network interfaces (ENIs) for EC2 instances in a VPC. For more information, see Elastic Network Interfaces (ENI).

New GRU Region and AKIs

Added information about the release of new AKIs for the SA-East-1 Region. This release deprecates the AKI version 1.01. AKI version 1.02 will continue to be backward compatible.

New offering types for Amazon EC2 Reserved Instances

2011-11-01

You can choose from a variety of Reserved Instance offerings that address your projected use of the instance: Heavy Utilization, Medium Utilization, and Light Utilization. See Reserved Instances.

Amazon EC2 instance status

You can view additional details about the status of your instances, including scheduled events planned by AWS that might have an impact on your instances. These operational activities include instance reboots required to apply software updates or security patches, or instance retirements required where there are hardware issues. See Monitoring the Status of Your Instances.

Amazon EC2 Cluster Compute Instance Type

Added support for Cluster Compute Eight Extra Large (cc2.8xlarge) to Amazon EC2.

New PDX Region and AKIs

Added information about the release of new AKI's for the new US-West 2 Region.

Amazon EC2 Spot Instances in Amazon VPC

Added information about the support for Amazon EC2 Spot Instances in Amazon VPC. With this update, users will be able to launch Spot Instances in the Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC). By launching Spot Instances in Amazon VPC, users of Spot Instances can enjoy all of the controls and advanced security options of Amazon VPC. For more information, see Launching Spot Instances in Amazon Virtual Private Cloud.

New Linux AMI release

Added information about the release of Amazon Linux AMI 2011.09. This update removes the beta tag from the Amazon Linux AMI, supports the ability to lock the repositories to a specific version, and provides for notification when updates are available to installed packages including security updates. For more information, see Amazon Linux AMIs.

Simplified VM import process for users of the CLI tools

The VM Import process for CLI users is simplified with the enhanced functionality of ec2-import-instance and ec2-import-volume, which now will perform the upload of the images into Amazon EC2 after creating the import task. In addition, with the introduction of the ec2-resume-import command, users can restart an incomplete upload at the point the task stopped. For more information, see Importing Your Virtual Machine into Amazon EC2 in the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud User Guide.

Support for importing in VHD file format

VM Import can now import virtual machine image files in VHD format. The VHD file format is compatible with the Citrix Xen and Microsoft Hyper-V virtualization platforms. With this release, VM Import now supports RAW, VHD and VMDK (VMware ESX-compatible) image formats. For more information, see Using the Command Line Tools to Import Your Virtual Machine to Amazon EC2 in the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud User Guide.

Support for Microsoft Windows Server 2003 R2

VM Import now supports Windows Server 2003 (R2). With this release, VM Import supports all versions of Microsoft Windows Server supported by Amazon EC2.

Update to the Amazon EC2 VM Import Connector for VMware vCenter

Added information about the 1.1 version of the Amazon EC2 VM Import Connector for VMware vCenter virtual appliance (Connector). This update includes proxy support for Internet access, better error handling, improved task progress bar accuracy, and several bug fixes. For more information, see Importing EC2 Instances.

Enabling Linux AMI to run user-provided kernels

Added information about the AKI version change from 1.01 to 1.02. This version updates the PVGRUB to address launch failures associated with t1.micro Linux instances. For more information, go to Enabling Your Own Linux Kernels.

Spot Instances Availability Zone pricing changes

Added information about the Spot Instances Availability Zone pricing feature. In this release, we've added new Availability Zone pricing options as part of the information returned when you query for Spot Instance requests and Spot Price history. These additions make it easier to determine the price required to launch a Spot Instance into a particular Availability Zone. For more information, see Spot Instances.

AWS Identity and Access Management

Added information about AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM), which enables users to specify which Amazon EC2 actions a user can use with Amazon EC2 resources in general. For more information, see Controlling Access to Amazon EC2 Resources.

Enabling Linux AMI to run user-provided kernels

Added information about enabling a Linux AMI to use PVGRUB Amazon Kernel Image (AKI) to run a user-provided kernel. For more information, go to Enabling Your Own Linux Kernels.

Dedicated instances

Launched within your Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC), Dedicated Instances are instances that are physically isolated at the host hardware level. Dedicated Instances let you take advantage of Amazon VPC and the AWS cloud, with benefits including on-demand elastic provisioning and pay only for what you use, while isolating your Amazon EC2 compute instances at the hardware level. For more information, go to Using EC2 Dedicated Instances Within Your VPC in the Amazon Virtual Private Cloud User Guide.

Reserved Instances updates to the AWS Management Console

Updates to the AWS Management Console make it easier for users to view their Reserved Instances and purchase additional Reserved Instances, including Dedicated Reserved Instances. For more information, see Reserved Instances.

Support for Windows Server 2008 R2

Amazon EC2 now provides you with several pre-configured Windows Server 2008 R2 AMIs. These AMIs are immediately available for use in every Region and in most 64-bit instance types, excluding t1.micro and HPC families. The AMIs will support multiple languages. For more information, see Windows Instance Types.

New Amazon Linux reference AMI

Added information about the new Amazon Linux reference AMI, which replaces the CentOS reference AMI. Removed information about the CentOS reference AMI, including the section named Correcting Clock Drift for Cluster Instances on CentOS 5.4 AMI. For more information, see Reference AMIs.

15 March 2011

Metadata information

Added information about metadata to reflect changes in the 2011-01-01 release. For more information, see Instance Metadata and Metadata Categories.

11 March 2011

Amazon EC2 VM Import Connector for VMware vCenter

Added information about the Amazon EC2 VM Import Connector for VMware vCenter virtual appliance (Connector). The Connector is a plug-in for VMware vCenter that integrates with VMware vSphere Client and provides a graphical user interface that you can use to import your VMware virtual machines to Amazon EC2. For more information, see Importing EC2 Instances.

Force volume detachment

You can now use the AWS Management Console to force the detachment of an Amazon EBS volume from an instance. For more information, see Detaching an Amazon EBS Volume from an Instance.

23 February 2011

Instance termination protection

You can now use the AWS Management Console to prevent an instance from being terminated. For more information, see Enabling Termination Protection for an Instance.

23 February 2011

Correcting Clock Drift for Cluster Instances on CentOS 5.4 AMI

Added information about how to correct clock drift for cluster instances running on Amazon's CentOS 5.4 AMI.

25 January 2011

Restructured User Guide

Implemented the following updates to the Amazon EC2 User Guide:

14 January 2011

VM Import

Added information about VM Import, which allows you to import a virtual machine or volume into Amazon EC2. For more information, see Using the Command Line Tools to Import Your Virtual Machine to Amazon EC2.

15 December 2010

Basic monitoring for instances

Added information about basic monitoring for EC2 instances. For more information, see Monitoring Instances.

12 December 2010

Cluster GPU instances

Amazon EC2 offers cluster GPU instances (cg1.4xlarge) for high-performance computing (HPC) applications. For more information, see Overview.

14 November 2010

Filters and Tags

Added information about listing, filtering, and tagging resources. For more information, see Listing and Filtering Your Resources and Tagging Your Amazon EC2 Resources.

19 September 2010

Idempotent Instance Launch

Added information about ensuring idempotency when running instances. For more information, see Ensuring Idempotency.

19 September 2010

Micro instances

Amazon EC2 offers the t1.micro instance type for certain types of applications. For more information, see Micro Instances.

8 September 2010

AWS Identity and Access Management for Amazon EC2

Amazon EC2 now integrates with AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM). For more information, see Controlling Access to Amazon EC2 Resources.

2 September 2010

Cluster instances

Amazon EC2 offers cluster compute instances for high-performance computing (HPC) applications. For more information, see Overview.

12 July 2010

Amazon VPC IP Address Designation

Amazon VPC users can now specify the IP address to assign an instance launched in a VPC.

12 July 2010

Amazon CloudWatch Monitoring for Amazon EBS Volumes

Amazon CloudWatch monitoring is now automatically available for Amazon EBS volumes. For more information, see Monitoring Volumes with CloudWatch.

14 June 2010

High-memory extra large instances

Amazon EC2 now supports a High-Memory Extra Large (m2.xlarge) instance type. For more information, see Available Instance Types.

22 February 2010

Reserved Instances with Windows

Amazon EC2 now supports Reserved Instances with Windows. For more information about Reserved Instances, see Reserved Instances.

22 February 2010