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User Guide for Windows Instances

AWS Documentation » Amazon EC2 » User Guide for Windows Instances » Amazon EC2 Instances » Configuring Your Windows Instance » AWS NVMe Drivers for Windows Instances

AWS NVMe Drivers for Windows Instances

EBS volumes and instance store volumes are exposed as NVMe block devices on Nitro-based instances. You must have the AWS NVMe driver installed in order to use an NVMe block device. The latest AWS Windows AMIs for Windows Server 2008 R2 and later contain the required AWS NVMe driver.

For more information about EBS and NVMe, see Amazon EBS and NVMe. For more information about SSD instance store and NVMe, see SSD Instance Store Volumes.

Installing or Upgrading AWS NVMe Drivers

If you are not using the latest AWS Windows AMIs provided by Amazon, use the following procedure to install the current AWS NVMe driver.

To download and install the latest AWS NVMe driver

  1. Connect to your instance and log in as the local administrator.

  2. Download the latest driver package to the instance.

  3. Extract the zip archive.

  4. Install the driver by running the install.ps1 PowerShell script.

  5. If the installer does not reboot your instance for you, restart the instance.

AWS NVMe Driver Version History

The following table describes the released versions of the AWS NVMe driver.

Driver version Details Release date

1.3.0

Device optimization improvements

31 August 2018

1.2.0

Performance and reliability improvements for AWS NVMe devices on all supported instances, including bare metal instances

13 June 2018

1.0.0

AWS NVMe driver for supported instance types running Windows Server

12 February 2018

Subscribing to Notifications

Amazon SNS can notify you when new versions of EC2 Windows Drivers are released. Use the following procedure to subscribe to these notifications.

To subscribe to EC2 notifications

  1. Open the Amazon SNS console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/sns/v2/home.

  2. In the navigation bar, change the region to US East (N. Virginia), if necessary. You must select this region because the SNS notifications that you are subscribing to are in this region.

  3. In the navigation pane, choose Subscriptions.

  4. Choose Create subscription.

  5. In the Create subscription dialog box, do the following:

    1. For TopicARN, copy the following Amazon Resource Name (ARN):

      arn:aws:sns:us-east-1:801119661308:ec2-windows-drivers

    2. For Protocol, choose Email.

    3. For Endpoint, type an email address that you can use to receive the notifications.

    4. Choose Create subscription.

  6. You'll receive a confirmation email. Open the email and follow the directions to complete your subscription.

Whenever new EC2 Windows drivers are released, we send notifications to subscribers. If you no longer want to receive these notifications, use the following procedure to unsubscribe.

To unsubscribe from Amazon EC2 Windows driver notification

  1. Open the Amazon SNS console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/sns/v2/home.

  2. In the navigation pane, choose Subscriptions.

  3. Select the checkbox for the subscription and then choose Actions, Delete subscriptions. When prompted for confirmation, choose Delete.