System requirements
Before you begin, you must be aware of the operating systems and image formats that VM Import/Export supports, and understand the limitations on importing instances and volumes.
Contents
Image formats
VM Import/Export supports the following image formats for importing both disks and VMs:
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Open Virtual Appliance (OVA) image format, which supports importing images with multiple hard disks.
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Stream-optimized ESX Virtual Machine Disk (VMDK) image format, which is compatible with VMware ESX and VMware vSphere virtualization products.
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Fixed and Dynamic Virtual Hard Disk (VHD/VHDX) image formats, which are compatible with Microsoft Hyper-V, Microsoft Azure, and Citrix Xen virtualization products.
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Raw format for importing disks and VMs.
Operating systems
The following operating systems (OS) can be imported to and exported from Amazon EC2.
Linux/Unix OS (64-bit only)
| Operating system | Version | Kernel | Service pack |
|---|---|---|---|
| Amazon Linux 2 | - | 4.14, 4.19, 5.4, 5.10 | - |
| CentOS | 5.1–5.11 | 2.6.18 | - |
| 6.1–6.8 | 2.6.32 | - | |
| 7.0–7.9 | 3.10.0 | - | |
| 8.0–8.2 | 4.18.0 | - | |
| Debian | 6.0.0–6.0.8 | 2.6.32 | - |
| 7.0.0–7.8.0 | 3.2 | - | |
| 10 | 4.19.0 | - | |
| 11 | 5.10.0 | - | |
| Fedora | 18 | 3.2.5 | - |
| 19 | 3.9.5 | - | |
| 20 | 3.11.10 | - | |
| Oracle Linux | 5.10–5.11 | el5uek kernel suffixes | - |
| 6.1–6.10 | RHEL-compatible kernels 2.6.32, 2.6.39 UEK kernels 3.8.13, 4.1.12 |
- | |
| 7.0–7.6 | RHEL compatible kernel 3.10.0 UEK kernels 3.8.13, 4.1.12, 4.14.35, 4.15, 5.4.17 |
- | |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) | 5 | 2.6.18 | - |
| 6 | 2.6.32 | - | |
| 7 | 3.10.0 | - | |
| 8.0–8.6 | 4.18.0 | - | |
| SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) | 11 | 2.6.32.12 | 1 |
| 3.0.13 | 2 | ||
| 3.0.76, 3.0.101, 3.0.101 | 3 | ||
| 3.0.101 | 4 | ||
| 12 | 3.12.28 | None | |
| 3.12.49 | 1 | ||
| 4.4 | 2, 3 | ||
| 4.12 | 4, 5 | ||
| 15 | 4.12 | None, 1 | |
| 5.3 | 2, 3 | ||
| Ubuntu | 12.04 | 3.2 | - |
| 12.10 | 3.5 | - | |
| 13.04 | 3.8 | - | |
| 13.10 | 3.11 | - | |
| 14.04 | 3.13, 3.16, 3.19 | - | |
| 14.10 | 3.16 | - | |
| 15.04 | 3.19 | - | |
| 16.04 | 4.2, 4.4, 4.8, 4.10, 4.15 | - | |
| 16.10 | 4.8 | - | |
| 17.04 | 4.10 | - | |
| 18.04 | 4.15, 5.4 | - | |
| 20.04 | 5.4 | - | |
| 22.04 | 5.15 | - |
Windows OS
| Operating system | Edition | Bit version | Available with non-default Regions |
|---|---|---|---|
| Microsoft Windows Server 2003 (Service Pack 1 or later) | Standard, Datacenter, Enterprise | 32, 64 | No |
| Microsoft Windows Server 2003 R2 | Standard, Datacenter, Enterprise | 32, 64 | No |
| Microsoft Windows Server 2008 | Standard, Datacenter, Enterprise | 32, 64 | No |
| Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 | Standard, Web Server, Datacenter, Enterprise | 64 | Yes 5 |
| Microsoft Windows Server 2012 | Standard, Datacenter | 64 | Yes 5 |
| Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 | Standard, Datacenter | 64 | Yes 5 |
| Microsoft Windows Server 2016 | Standard, Datacenter 3 | 64 | Yes 5 |
| Microsoft Windows Server 1709 | Standard, Datacenter | 64 | Yes 5 |
| Microsoft Windows Server 1803 | Standard, Datacenter | 64 | Yes 5 |
| Microsoft Windows Server 2019 | Standard, Datacenter | 64 | Yes 5 |
| Microsoft Windows 7 1 | Home, Professional, Enterprise, Ultimate | 32, 64 4 | Yes 5 |
| Microsoft Windows 8 1 | Home, Professional, Enterprise | 32, 64 4 | Yes 5 |
| Microsoft Windows 8.1 1 | Professional, Enterprise | 64 | Yes 5 |
| Microsoft Windows 10 1 | Home, Professional, Enterprise, Education | 64 | Yes 5 |
| Microsoft Windows 11 1,2 | Home, Professional, Enterprise, Education | 64 | Yes 5,6 |
1 The operating system must have its language set
as US English during import.
2 Windows 11 requires the Unified Extensible
Firmware Interface (UEFI) boot mode to function. To help ensure a successful
import of your VM, we recommend that you specify the optional
--boot-mode parameter as uefi. For more
information, see Boot modes.
3 Nano Server installations are not supported.
4 Only the 64-bit version of the OS is supported when launching instances within non-default AWS Regions. For more information, see Available Regions in the Amazon EC2 User Guide for Windows Instances.
5 You must first enable the Region before you can use the operating system there. For more information, see Available Regions in the Amazon EC2 User Guide for Windows Instances and Managing AWS Regions in the Amazon Web Services General Reference Guide.
6 Windows 11 is not supported in the Asia Pacific (Jakarta) Region.
Boot modes
When a computer boots, the first software that it runs is responsible for initializing
the platform and providing an interface for the operating system to perform
platform-specific operations. VM Import/Export supports two variants of the boot mode: Unified
Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) and Legacy BIOS. You can choose whether to specify
the optional --boot-mode parameter as legacy-bios or
uefi when importing your VM.
Refer to the Boot Modes section of the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud User Guide for more information about specifying a boot mode, and UEFI variables.
Volume types and file systems
VM Import/Export supports importing Windows and Linux VMs with the following file systems:
Windows
GUID Partition Table (GPT) and Master Boot Record (MBR) partitioned volumes that are formatted using the NTFS file system are supported. If no boot parameter is specified, and the VM is compatible in both boot modes, the GPT volumes will be converted to MBR partitioned volumes.
VM Import/Export will automatically detect the boot modes your Windows VM is compatible with. If
the Windows VM is only compatible in a single boot mode, you don't need to specify a
specific --boot-mode parameter.
If your Windows VM is compatible with both boot modes, and the following criteria
is met for the imported disk, VM Import/Export will select Legacy BIOS by default. You can specify
uefi for the --boot-mode parameter to override this
behavior.
-
The disk is smaller than 2 terabytes
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The disk does not contain more than 4 primary partitions
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The disk is not a Windows dynamic disk
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The file format is VHDX
Linux/Unix
MBR partitioned volumes and GUID Partition Table (GPT) partitioned volumes that are formatted using the ext2, ext3, ext4, Btrfs, JFS, or XFS file system are supported.
Btrfs subvolumes are not supported.
Limitations
The following limitations may apply to the virtual machines and volumes you are importing.
General
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An imported VM may fail to boot if the root partition is not on the same virtual hard drive as the MBR.
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A VM import task fails for VMs with more than 21 volumes attached. Additional disks can be individually imported using the
ImportSnapshotAPI. -
Importing VMs with dual-boot configurations is not supported.
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VM Import/Export does not support VMs that use Raw Device Mapping (RDM). Only VMDK disk images are supported.
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Multiple network interfaces are not currently supported. After import, your VM has a single virtual network interface that uses DHCP to assign addresses. Your instance receives a private IP address.
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A VM migrated into a VPC does not receive a public IP address, regardless of the auto-assign public IP setting for the subnet. Instead, you can allocate an Elastic IP address to your account and associate it with your instance.
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VM Import/Export assigns only IPv4 addresses to your instances. You can add IPv6 addresses.
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Disk images must be less than 16 TiB. For disk images that are larger than 8 TiB, you must use a manifest file.
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VM Import/Export does not support VMware SEsparse delta-file format.
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VMs that are created as the result of a P2V conversion are not supported. A P2V conversion occurs when a disk image is created by performing a Linux or Windows installation process on a physical machine and then importing a copy of that Linux or Windows installation to a VM.
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The base AMI used to launch an instance must exist when you attempt to export the instance. If you have deleted the AMI, the export fails.
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If you import a VM that's compatible with UEFI, you can't specify:
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To use Encryption
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A license configuration
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An EBS snapshot, unless you also specify a platform
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Windows
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When preparing Amazon EC2 Windows VMs for import, make sure that there is sufficient disk space available on the root volume for installing drivers and other software. For Microsoft Windows VMs, configure a fixed page file size and ensure that there is at least 6 GiB of free space available on the root volume. If Windows is configured to use the "Automatically manage paging file size for all drives" setting, it might create 16 GB
pagefile.sysfiles on the C drive of the instance. -
If you import a Windows VM compatible with UEFI, we convert GPT boot volumes to MBR if the following are true: the image format is VHDX, the uncompressed size is 2 TiB or smaller, there are no more than three primary partitions, and the volume is not a dynamic disk.
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If you import a Windows Server 2012 R2 VM, VM Import/Export installs the single root I/O virtualization (SR-IOV) drivers. These drivers are not required unless you plan to use enhanced networking, which provides higher performance (packets per second), lower latency, and lower jitter.
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VM Import/Export does not support Emergency Management Services (EMS). If EMS is enabled for a source Windows VM, we disable it in the imported image.
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Windows language packs that use UTF-16 (or non-ASCII) characters are not supported for import. We recommend using the English language pack when importing Windows VMs.
Linux
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Imported Linux VMs must use 64-bit images. Migrating 32-bit Linux images is not supported.
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Imported Linux VMs should use default kernels for best results. VMs that use custom Linux kernels might not migrate successfully.
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When preparing Amazon EC2 Linux VMs for import, make sure that there is sufficient disk space available on the root volume for installing drivers and other software.
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If you import a Linux VM compatible with UEFI, you must have a fallback EFI binary, BOOTX64.EFI, located on the EFI System Partition.
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Export operations do not support hybrid configurations. GRUB2 must be enabled for either BIOS or UEFI, but it can't be enabled for both.
