Importing a VM as an instance using VM Import/Export - VM Import/Export
Limitations of instance importImport a VM with instance import

Importing a VM as an instance using VM Import/Export

Important

We strongly recommend that you import VMs as Amazon Machine Images (AMI) instead of instances. For more information, see Importing a VM as an image.

You can use VM Import/Export to import virtual machine (VM) images from your virtualization environment to Amazon EC2 as instances. Subsequently, you can export the VM images from the instance back to your virtualization environment. This enables you to leverage your investments in the VMs that you have built to meet your IT security, configuration management, and compliance requirements by bringing them into Amazon EC2.

Limitations of instance import

Importing a VM as an instance has the following limitations:

  • The AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI) does not support importing a VM as an instance, so you must use the deprecated Amazon EC2 Command Line Interface (Amazon EC2 CLI).

  • You cannot import a Windows instance that uses the bring your own license (BYOL) model as an instance. Instead, you must import the VM as an AMI.

  • VM Import/Export supports importing Windows instances into most instance types. Linux instances can be imported into the following instance types:

    • General purpose: t2.micro | t2.small | t2.medium | m3.medium | m3.large | m3.xlarge | m3.2xlarge

    • Compute optimized: c3.large | c3.xlarge | c3.2xlarge | c3.4xlarge | c3.8xlarge | cc1.4xlarge | cc2.8xlarge

    • Memory optimized: r3.large | r3.xlarge | r3.2xlarge | r3.4xlarge | r3.8xlarge | cr1.8xlarge

    • Storage optimized: i2.xlarge | i2.2xlarge | i2.4xlarge | i2.8xlarge | hi1.4xlarge | hi1.8xlarge

  • The ImportInstance and ImportVolume API actions are supported only in the following Regions and will not be supported in any additional Regions.

    • North America: us-east-1 | us-west-1 | us-west-2 | us-east-2 | ca-central-1 | us-gov-west-1

    • South America: sa-east-1

    • Europe/Middle East/Africa: eu-west-1 | eu-central-1

    • Asia Pacific: ap-southeast-1 | ap-northeast-1 | ap-southeast-2 | ap-northeast-2 | ap-south-1 | cn-north-1

Import a VM with instance import

You can use the ImportInstance operation to import your VM as an instance. For more information, see ImportInstance in the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud API Reference.