Amazon ECS-optimized AMI

Amazon ECS provides the Amazon ECS-optimized AMIs that are preconfigured with the requirements and recommendations to run your container workloads on Amazon ECS Linux instances. We recommend that you use the Amazon ECS-optimized Amazon Linux 2 AMI for your Amazon EC2 instances unless your application requires a specific operating system or a Docker version that is not yet available in that AMI.

Although you can create your own Amazon EC2 instance AMI that meets the basic specifications needed to run your containerized workloads on Amazon ECS, the Amazon ECS-optimized AMIs are preconfigured and tested on Amazon ECS by AWS engineers. It is the simplest way for you to get started and to get your containers running on AWS quickly.

The Amazon ECS-optimized AMI metadata, including the AMI name, Amazon ECS container agent version, and Amazon ECS runtime version which includes the Docker version, for each variant can be retrieved programmatically. For more information, see Retrieving Amazon ECS-Optimized AMI metadata.

The following variants of the Amazon ECS-optimized AMI are available for your Amazon EC2 instances.

Operating system	AMI	Description
Amazon Linux 2	Amazon ECS-optimized Amazon Linux 2 AMI	For most cases, recommended for launching your Amazon EC2 instances for your Amazon ECS workloads. The Amazon ECS-optimized Amazon Linux 2 AMI does not come with the AWS CLI preinstalled.
	Amazon ECS-optimized Amazon Linux 2 kernel 5.10 AMI	Based on Amazon Linux 2, this AMI is recommended for use when launching your Amazon EC2 instances and you want to use Linux kernel 5.10 instead of kernel 4.14 for your Amazon ECS workloads. The Amazon ECS-optimized Amazon Linux 2 kernel 5.10 AMI does not come with the AWS CLI preinstalled.
Amazon Linux 2 (arm64)	Amazon ECS-optimized Amazon Linux 2 (arm64) AMI	Based on Amazon Linux 2, this AMI is recommended for use when launching your Amazon EC2 instances, which are powered by Arm-based AWS Graviton/Graviton 2 Processors, for your Amazon ECS workloads. For more information, see General Purpose Instances in the Amazon EC2 User Guide for Linux Instances. The Amazon ECS-optimized Amazon Linux 2 (arm64) AMI does not come with the AWS CLI preinstalled.
	Amazon ECS-optimized Amazon Linux 2 kernel 5.10 (arm64) AMI	Based on Amazon Linux 2, this AMI is recommended for use when launching your Amazon EC2 instances, which are powered by Arm-based AWS Graviton/Graviton 2 Processors, and you want to use Linux kernel 5.10 instead of Linux kernel 4.14 for your Amazon ECS workloads. The Amazon ECS GPU-optimized AMI does not come with the AWS CLI preinstalled.
Amazon Linux 2 (GPU)	Amazon ECS GPU-optimized AMI	Based on Amazon Linux 2, this AMI is recommended for use when launching your Amazon EC2 GPU-based instances for your Amazon ECS workloads. It comes pre-configured with NVIDIA kernel drivers and a Docker GPU runtime which makes running workloads that take advantage of GPUs on Amazon ECS. For more information, see Working with GPUs on Amazon ECS.
Amazon Linux (Inferentia)	Amazon ECS optimized Amazon Linux 2 (Inferentia) AMI	Based on Amazon Linux 2, this AMI is recommended for use when launching your Amazon EC2 Inf1 instances. It comes pre-configured with AWS Inferentia drivers and the AWS Neuron runtime for Docker which makes running machine learning inference workloads easier on Amazon ECS. For more information, see Using Trn1 and Inf1 instances on Amazon Linux 2 on Amazon ECS. The Amazon ECS optimized Amazon Linux 2 (Inferentia) AMI does not come with the AWS CLI preinstalled.
Amazon Linux 2022	Amazon ECS-optimized Amazon Linux 2022 AMI	Amazon Linux 2022 is the next generation of Amazon Linux from AWS. For most cases, recommended for launching your Amazon EC2 instances for your Amazon ECS workloads. For more information, see What is Amazon Linux 2022 in the Amazon Linux 2022 User Guide. Important The Amazon ECS-Optimized Amazon Linux 2022 AMI is in preview and subject to change.
Amazon Linux	Amazon ECS-optimized Amazon Linux AMI	This AMI is based off of Amazon Linux. We recommend that you migrate your workloads to the Amazon ECS-optimized Amazon Linux 2 AMI. Support for the Amazon ECS-optimized Amazon Linux AMI is the same as the Amazon Linux AMI. For more information, see Amazon Linux AMI. Important On April 15, 2021, the Amazon ECS-optimized Amazon Linux AMI ended its standard support phase and entered a maintenance support phase. In the maintenance support phase, Amazon ECS will continue providing critical and important security updates for a reduced list of packages. During this period, Amazon ECS will no longer add support for new EC2 instance types, new services and features, and new packages. Instead, Amazon ECS will provide updates only for critical and important security fixes that apply to a reduced set of packages. Maintenance support period will end on June 30, 2023.

Amazon ECS-optimized AMI changelog

Amazon ECS provides a changelog for the Linux variant of the Amazon ECS-optimized AMI on GitHub. For more information, see Changelog.

The Linux variants of the Amazon ECS-optimized AMI use the Amazon Linux 2 AMI as their base. The Amazon Linux 2 source AMI name for each variant can be retrieved by querying the Systems Manager Parameter Store API. For more information, see Retrieving Amazon ECS-Optimized AMI metadata. The Amazon Linux 2 AMI release notes are available as well. For more information, see Amazon Linux 2 release notes.