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AWS Documentation » Amazon EC2 » User Guide » Exporting an Instance as a VM Using VM Import/Export

Exporting an Instance as a VM Using VM Import/Export

Exporting a VM is useful when you want to deploy a copy of your Amazon EC2 instance in your on-site virtualization environment. You can export most EC2 instances to Citrix Xen, Microsoft Hyper-V, or VMware vSphere.

Important

When you export an instance, you are charged the standard Amazon S3 rates for the bucket where the exported VM is stored. In addition, there might be a small charge for the temporary use of an Amazon EBS snapshot. For more information about Amazon S3 pricing, see Amazon Simple Storage Service Pricing.

If you're using VMware vSphere, you can alternatively use the AWS Connector for vCenter to export a VM from Amazon EC2. For more information, see Exporting a Migrated Amazon EC2 Instance in the AWS Management Portal for vCenter User Guide.

Prerequisites

To export a VM from Amazon EC2, install the AWS CLI on the instance. For more information, see the AWS Command Line Interface User Guide.

You can create an Amazon S3 bucket for storing the exported instances and grant VM Import/Export permission to access the bucket. If you already have a bucket and want to use it, you can use it instead of creating a bucket.

(Optional) To create an S3 bucket

  1. Open the Amazon S3 console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/s3/.

  2. Choose Create Bucket.

  3. In the Create a Bucket dialog box, do the following:

    1. For Bucket Name, type a name for your bucket. This name must be unique across all existing bucket names in Amazon S3. In some regions, there might be additional restrictions on bucket names. For more information, see Bucket Restrictions and Limitations in the Amazon Simple Storage Service Developer Guide.

    2. For Region, select a region.

    3. Choose Create. When the bucket is created, the details pane opens with the Permissions section expanded.

    4. Choose Add More Permissions.

    5. For Grantee, type the appropriate region-specific canonical account ID:

      • China (Beijing): 834bafd86b15b6ca71074df0fd1f93d234b9d5e848a2cb31f880c149003ce36f

      • AWS GovCloud (US-West): af913ca13efe7a94b88392711f6cfc8aa07c9d1454d4f190a624b126733a5602

      • All other regions: c4d8eabf8db69dbe46bfe0e517100c554f01200b104d59cd408e777ba442a322

    6. Select Upload/Delete and View Permissions.

    7. Choose Save.

For more information, see Editing Bucket Permissions in the Amazon Simple Storage Service Console User Guide.

Considerations When Using VM Export

Exporting instances and volumes is subject to the following limitations:

  • You cannot export a VM if it contains third-party software provided by AWS. For example, VM Export cannot export Windows or SQL Server instances, or any instance created from an image in the AWS Marketplace.

  • You must export your instances and volumes to one of the following image formats that your virtualization environment supports:

    • Open Virtual Appliance (OVA), which is compatible with VMware vSphere versions 4, 5, and 6.

    • Virtual Hard Disk (VHD), which is compatible with Citrix Xen and Microsoft Hyper-V virtualization products.

    • Stream-optimized ESX Virtual Machine Disk (VMDK), which is compatible with VMware ESX and VMware vSphere versions 4, 5, and 6.

  • You can't export Amazon EBS data volumes.

  • You can't export an instance that has more than one virtual disk.

  • You can't export an instance that has more than one network interface.

  • You can't export an instance from Amazon EC2 if you've shared it from another AWS account.

  • You can't have more than five export tasks per region in progress at the same time.

  • VMs with volumes larger than 1 TiB are not supported.

Export an Instance

To export your instance, use the create-instance-export-task command. You must provide the information required to properly export the instance to the selected virtualization format. The exported file is saved in the S3 bucket that you specify. 

aws ec2 create-instance-export-task --instance-id id --target-environment target_environment \
--export-to-s3-task DiskImageFormat=disk_image_format,ContainerFormat=ova,S3Bucket=bucket,S3Prefix=prefix

Options

id

The ID of the instance.

target_environment

The target environment (vmware | citrix | microsoft).

disk_image_format

The disk image format (VMDK | VHD).

bucket

The name of the S3 bucket.

prefix

The image is written to an object in the S3 bucket using the following S3 key: prefix/export-i-xxxxxxxx.format (for example, my-exports/export-i-12345678.ova).

Monitor Instance Export

To monitor the export of your instance, use the following describe-export-tasks command: 

aws ec2 describe-export-tasks --export-task-ids export-i-12345678

Cancel or Stop Instance Export

You can use the following cancel-export-task command to cancel or stop the export of an instance up to the point of completion. 

aws ec2 cancel-export-task --export-task-id export-i-12345678

The cancel-export-task command removes all artifacts of the export, including any partially created Amazon S3 objects. If the export task is complete or is in the process of transferring the final disk image, the command fails and returns an error.