Launching EC2 Instances

This section describes how to launch EC2 instances. All EC2 instances are launched from an AMI. The AMI specifies the operating system, application server, and applications that the instance will have.

All instances require a key pair so that login information can be securely communicated. You can either use an existing key pair, or create a new key pair for your instance. For more information about creating key pairs, see Getting a Key Pair.

If you have a snapshot of the root device volume of a Linux/UNIX instance, you can create and launch an AMI from that snapshot. For more information about creating and launching an instance from a snapshot, see Creating and Launching an AMI from a Snapshot.