Creating an Amazon Machine Image (AMI) from the Virtual Hard Disk (VHD) file

Edit online

Upload the appliance VHD image to Amazon EC2 and create an AMI so that it can be deployed in Amazon EC2.

About this task

Follow these steps to manually upload an image and create an AMI with the Amazon EC2 console.

Procedure

  1. Download and install the Amazon EC2 API Tools. You can download the tool from the Amazon EC2 API Tools page.
  2. Run the following commands in the specified sequence to upload the VHD to Amazon EC2 and create an AMI.
    Sequence Command Description
    1 ec2-import-volume Imports the appliance VHD into Amazon EC2.
    2 ec2-describe-conversion-tasks Monitors the ec2-import-volume task to show when the task is complete.
    3 ec2-create-snapshot Creates a snapshot of the imported disk image. This snapshot is required during the AMI registration process.
    4 ec2-describe-snapshots Monitors the status of the snapshot creation to show when the snapshot task is complete.
    5 ec2-register Registers a snapshot as a new AMI.

    You must use the following parameter values when you register the AMI:

    architecture:
    x86_64
    kernel:
    Use the appropriate parameter value for the kernel ID.
    root device name:
    /dev/xvda
    virtualization type:
    hvm
    6 ec2-delete-disk-image Removes the uploaded disk image from the storage bucket. The image is no longer required after you finish registering an AMI from the image.