Find an AMI that meets the requirements for your EC2 instance

An AMI includes the components and applications, such as the operating system and type of root volume, required to launch an instance. To launch an instance, you must find an AMI that meets your needs.

When selecting an AMI, consider the following requirements you might have for the instances that you want to launch:

• The AWS Region of the AMI as AMI IDs are unique to each Region.

• The operating system (for example, Linux or Windows).

• The architecture (for example, 32-bit, 64-bit, or 64-bit ARM).

• The root device type (for example, Amazon EBS or instance store).

• The provider (for example, Amazon Web Services).

• Additional software (for example, SQL Server).

For more information about AMIs for a specific operating system, see the following:

• Amazon Linux 2023 – AL2023 on Amazon EC2 in the Amazon Linux 2023 User Guide

• Ubuntu – Amazon EC2 AMI Locator on the Canonical Ubuntu website

• RHEL – Red Hat Enterprise Linux Images (AMI) Available on Amazon Web Services (AWS) on the Red Hat website

• Windows Server – AWS Windows AMI reference

For information about AMIs that you can subscribe to on the AWS Marketplace see Paid AMIs in the AWS Marketplace for Amazon EC2 instances.

For information about using Systems Manager to help your users find the latest AMI that they should use when launching an instance, see the following:

• Reference AMIs using Systems Manager parameters

• Reference the latest AMIs using Systems Manager public parameters

Console

You can select from the list of AMIs when you use the launch instance wizard, or you can search all available AMIs using the Images page.

To find a Quick Start AMI using the launch instance wizard

1. Open the Amazon EC2 console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/ec2/.

2. From the navigation bar, select the Region in which to launch your instances. You can select any Region that's available to you, regardless of your location. AMI IDs are unique to each AWS Region.

3. From the console dashboard, choose Launch instance.

4. Under Application and OS Images (Amazon Machine Image), choose Quick Start, choose the operating system (OS) for your instance, and then, from Amazon Machine Image (AMI), select from one of the commonly used AMIs in the list. If you don't see the AMI that you want to use, choose Browse more AMIs to browse the full AMI catalog. For more information, see Application and OS Images (Amazon Machine Image).

To find an AMI using the AMIs page

1. Open the Amazon EC2 console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/ec2/.

2. From the navigation bar, select the Region in which to launch your instances. You can select any Region that's available to you, regardless of your location. AMI IDs are unique to each AWS Region.

3. In the navigation pane, choose AMIs.

4. (Optional) Use the filter and search options to scope the list of displayed AMIs to see only the AMIs that match your criteria.

   For example, to list all AMIs provided by AWS, choose Public images. Then use the search options to further scope the list of displayed AMIs. Choose the Search bar and, from the menu, choose Owner alias, then the = operator, and then the value amazon. To find AMIs that match a specific platform, for example Linux or Windows, choose the Search bar again to choose Platform, then the = operator, and then the operating system from the list provided.

5. (Optional) Choose the Preferences icon to select which image attributes to display, such as the root device type. Alternatively, you can select an AMI from the list and view its properties on the Details tab.

6. Before you select an AMI, it's important that you check whether it's backed by instance store or by Amazon EBS and that you are aware of the effects of this difference. For more information, see Root device type.

7. To launch an instance from this AMI, select it and then choose Launch instance from image. For more information about launching an instance using the console, see Launch an EC2 instance using the launch instance wizard in the console. If you're not ready to launch the instance now, make note of the AMI ID for later.

AWS CLI

You can use the describe-images command to list only the AMIs that match your requirements. After locating an AMI that matches your requirements, make note of its ID so that you can use it to launch instances. For more information, see Launch your instance in the AWS Command Line Interface User Guide.

The describe-images command supports filtering parameters. For example, use the --owners parameter to display public AMIs owned by Amazon.

aws ec2 describe-images --owners amazon

You can add the following filter to the previous command to display only Windows AMIs.

--filters "Name=platform,Values=windows"

You can add the following filter to the previous command to display only AMIs backed by Amazon EBS.

--filters "Name=root-device-type,Values=ebs"

Important

If you omit the --owners parameter from the describe-images command, all images are returned for which you have launch permissions, regardless of ownership.

PowerShell

You can use PowerShell cmdlets to list only the Windows AMIs that match your requirements. For information and examples, see Find an Amazon Machine Image Using Windows PowerShell in the AWS Tools for Windows PowerShell User Guide.

After locating an AMI that matches your requirements, make note of its ID so that you can use it to launch instances. For more information, see Launch an Amazon EC2 Instance Using Windows PowerShell in the AWS Tools for Windows PowerShell User Guide.