Migrate to Xen instance types from Nitro instance types - Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud

Migrate to Xen instance types from Nitro instance types

The following procedure assumes that you are currently running on a Nitro-based instance type, and that you are migrating to an instance based on the Xen System, such as M4 or C4. For instance type specifications, see the Amazon EC2 Instance Types Guide. Perform the following steps before the migration to avoid errors during the booting process.

To migrate from Nitro to Xen

  1. Back up your data.

  2. Verify that your Windows san policy allows non-root storage volumes to come online.

  3. AWS PV drivers must be installed and upgraded on a Nitro instance before you migrate to a Xen instance. For steps to install and upgrade AWS PV drivers, see Part 1: Install and upgrade AWS PV drivers.

  4. Update to the latest EC2Launch v2 version. See Migrate to EC2Launch v2 for steps.

  5. Open a PowerShell session and run the following command as an administrator to sysprep the device drivers. Running sysprep ensures that early boot storage drivers required for booting on Xen instances are properly registered with Windows.

    Note

    Running the command using PowerShell (x86) versions will result in an error. This command adds only the boot-critical device drivers to the critical device database. It does not run the full sysprep preparation.

    Start-Process rundll32.exe sppnp.dll,Sysprep_Generalize_Pnp -wait

  6. Perform the migration to a Xen instance type when the sysprep process completes.