Is it possible to move an AWS EC2 AMI from one region to another region and if so how?

Question

I have an AWS EC2 AMI in the EU region. I want to move it to the US region. The root device type is EBS and the OS is Linux.

Is it possible to transfer the image to the US region and if so how?

Answer 1

You sure can. The command you're going to be looking for is ec2-migrate-bundle, and there are a few web sites with how-tos.

• http://www.dotanmazor.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=96:ec2-ami-move&catid=16:2008-11-14-08-43-34&Itemid=48
• http://chansiulun.com/2010/05/11/how-to-migrate-your-ec2-server-to-singapore-region/ (replace the Signapore location with the appropriate region)

In a nut shell, its just a matter of uploading the bundle to the right region.

Good luck!

Andrew

Answer 2

The ec2-migrate-bundle tool migrates only S3-based AMIs, which are for launching instances with ephemeral instance storage mounted as the root volume. If your root device type is EBS, that isn't going to help you. AMIs for EBS-backed instances are stored as EBS snapshots. Here are instructions for moving an EBS-based AMI between regions.

Answer 3

Actually it is better to use this utility.

It moves EBS-based images between regions. ec2-api-tools work only with S3-based AMIs.

Answer 4

You can now do this using the AWS EC2 Management Console.

See AWS Documentation and Move Amazon EC2 AMIs between regions via web-interface?

In simplest terms, you can find the snapshot that the AMI uses and copy it to the target region. Once you have the snapshot in your desired region you can create another AMI from it.