Understanding AMI-based products in AWS Marketplace - AWS Marketplace
Product lifecycleAMI product codesChange requestsProduct Load FormsAnnual agreement amendments

Understanding AMI-based products in AWS Marketplace

As an AWS Marketplace seller, you can deliver your products to buyers with Amazon Machine Images (AMIs). An AMI provides the information required to launch an Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instance. The following sections section explains the key concepts for working with AMI-based products.

Note

You can only use one AMI in an AMI product, but you can add versions of that AMI to the product.

Product lifecycle

AMI-based products include one or more versions of the software, plus metadata about the product as a whole. When you create the product, you configure its properties in AWS Marketplace including the product name, description, and pricing. You also determine the appropriate categories for your product and add keywords so your product appears in relevant searches.

You also create the first version of the software. This can be just the AMI, or you can include AWS CloudFormation templates or software packages that buyers can use to create their own AMIs. For more information, see AMI-based product delivery methods.

For paid products, buyers are billed for the number of installed instances. To meter on a different dimension that your software tracks, such as the number of product users, integrate your product with the AWS Marketplace Metering Service. For more information, see Configuring custom metering for AMI products with AWS Marketplace Metering Service.

When you create your product and the first version of your software, it's initially published in a limited scope so that only your account can access it. When you're ready, you can publish it to the AWS Marketplace catalog to allow buyers to subscribe and purchase your product.

You use the Server product page to view the list of your products. Products will have one of the following statuses:

  • Staging – An incomplete product for which you are still adding information. At the first Save and exit from the create self-service experience, the successful change request creates an unpublished product with information from the full steps you submitted. From this state, you can continue adding information to the product or change already submitted details through change requests.

  • Limited – A product is complete after it is submitted to the system and passes all validation in the system. Then the product is released to a Limited state. At this point, the product has a detail page that is only accessible to your account and whoever you have allowlisted. You can test your product through the detail page. If necessary, for more information and help, contact the AWS Marketplace Seller Operations team.

  • Public – When you're ready to publish the product so that buyers can view and subscribe to the product, you use the Update visibility change request. This initiates a workflow for the AWS Marketplace Seller Operations team to review and audit your product against our policies. Once the product is approved and the change request is processed, the product is moved from a status of Limited to Public.

  • Restricted – If you want to stop new users from subscribing to your product, you can restrict the product by using the Update visibility change request. A Restricted status means that existing users can continue to use the product. However, the product will no longer be visible to the public or be available to new users.

The lifecycle of an AMI-based product for AWS Marketplace does not end after you publish the first version. You should keep your product up to date with new versions of your software, and with security patches for the base operating system.

As an example of a complete AMI-based product lifecycle, imagine a seller wants to sell their AMI-based product on AWS Marketplace. Following is how the seller creates and maintains the product over time:

  1. Create a product – The seller creates the product, and publishes version 1.0.0 to AWS Marketplace. Buyers can create instances of version 1.0.0 and use it.

  2. Add a new version – Later, the seller adds a new feature to the product, and adds a new version, 1.1.0, that includes the feature. Buyers can still use the original version, 1.0.0, or they can choose the new version, 1.1.0.

    Note

    Unlike new products, new versions are published to full public availability. You can only test them in AWS Marketplace without customers seeing them if the product as a whole is in limited release.

  3. Update product information – With version 1.1.0 available, the seller lets buyers know about the new feature by updating the product information with new highlight text describing the feature.

  4. Add a minor version – When the seller fixes a bug in version 1.1.0, they release it by adding a new version 1.1.1. Buyers now have the choice of using version 1.0.0, 1.1.0, or 1.1.1.

  5. Restrict a version – The seller decides that the bug is serious enough that they don’t want buyers to be able to use version 1.1.0, so they restrict that version. No new customers can then buy 1.1.0 (they can only choose 1.0.0 or 1.1.1), although existing buyers still have access to it.

  6. Update version information – To help those existing buyers, the seller updates the version information for 1.1.0 with a suggestion to upgrade to version 1.1.1.

  7. Monitor usage – As buyers purchase and use the product, the seller monitors sales, usage, and other metrics using the AWS Marketplace Seller reports, data feeds, and dashboards in AWS Marketplace.

  8. Remove the product – When the product is no longer needed, the seller removes it from AWS Marketplace.

In this example, the seller created three different versions of the AMI in the product, but only two were available to new buyers (prior to removing the product).

To make modifications to versions or the product information, you create change requests in the AWS Marketplace Management Portal.

For detailed instructions on the steps to create and manage your AMI-based product, see Creating single-AMI products.

AMI product codes

A unique product code is assigned to your product when you create it in AWS Marketplace. That product code is associated with the AMI for your product and is used to track usage of your product. Product codes are propagated automatically as buyers work with the software. For example, a customer subscribes and launches an AMI, configures it, and produces a new AMI. The new AMI still contains the original product code, so correct usage tracking and permissions remain in place.

Note

The product code is different than the product ID for your product. Each product in AWS Marketplace is assigned a unique product ID. The product ID is used to identify your product in the AWS Marketplace catalog, in customer billing, and in seller reports. The product code is attached to instances created from your AMI as instance metadata. When an AMI with that product code is used to create an instance, the customer will get a bill that shows the associated product ID. After you create your product, find the product code and the product ID in the AWS Marketplace Management Portal page for your product.

As a seller, your software can get the product code for the running Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instance at runtime from the instance metadata. You can use the product code for extra security, such as validating the product code at product start. You can't make API calls to an AMI's product code until the product has been published into a limited state for testing. For more information about verifying the product code, see Verifying your software is running on your AWS Marketplace AMI .

Change requests

To make changes to a product or version in AWS Marketplace, you submit a change request through the AWS Marketplace Management Portal. Change requests are added to a queue and can take from minutes to days to resolve, depending on the type of request. You can see the status of requests in the AWS Marketplace Management Portal.

Note

In addition to the AWS Marketplace Management Portal, you can also create change requests by using the AWS Marketplace Catalog API.

The types of changes you can request for AMI-based products include:

  • Update product information displayed to buyers.

  • Update version information displayed to buyers.

  • Add a new version of your product.

  • Restrict a version so that new buyers can no longer access that version.

  • Update the AWS Regions that a product is available in.

  • Update the pricing and instance types for a product.

  • Remove a product from AWS Marketplace.

Note

Some change requests require you to use product load forms to create the request. For more information, see Product Load Forms.

Update change request

Change requests that start with an update will load the current details. You then make updates, which overwrite the existing details.

Add or restrict change request

Add and restrict request pairs are specifically for steps and updates that are provisioned after each request succeeds. A request succeeds after you choose Save and exit and Submit actions in the self-service experience.

For example, if the AMI asset is provisioned to the instances and Regions once added, then they can only be restricted rather than completely removed. This means existing subscribers and users can continue to use the product until their subscription or contract runs out. However, no new subscribers can be added to a product that is in a Restricted status.

Product Load Forms

Typically, you use AWS Marketplace Management Portal to create or edit your product. However, a few operations require you to use a Product Load Form (PLF).

A PLF is a spreadsheet that contains all the information about a product. To obtain a PLF, you can:

  • Download the PLF for an existing product from the product's details page in the AWS Marketplace Management Portal.

  • Select a menu item for an action that requires a PLF. For example, if you create a new monthly billed server product, the system prompts you to download the appropriate PLF.

    If the action is an edit to an existing product, the PLF is pre-populated with the information for that product, so you only need to change the details that you want to update.

  • If you need a new, blank PLF, navigate to the AWS Marketplace Management Portal File upload page. The page contains links to PLFs for the product type you want to create.

After you have completed your PLF, upload it to the AWS Marketplace Management Portal File upload page. The PLF itself has more detailed instructions in the Instructions tab.

Annual agreement amendments

Hourly annual (annual) plan amendments allow you and your buyers to make the following changes to existing plans:

  • Switch between Amazon EC2 instance type families

  • Switch between Amazon EC2 instance type sizes

  • Add a new instance type

  • Increase the quantity of an existing instance type in the agreement

Buyers can make a change as long as the prorated cost of the change is greater than zero (they can't lower the value of the subscription). The prorated cost of the newly added Amazon EC2 instances is based on the annual cost of the instance type adjusted for the remaining term of the agreement. When switching instance types, the prorated cost of the removed Amazon EC2 instance type is deducted from the prorated cost of the newly added Amazon EC2 instance type.

No additional action is required to enable amendments on AMI annual products. Amendments are supported on all agreements made from public offers and agreements from private offers that don't use installment plans.

You can see the amendments made by your buyers on the following dashboards: