AWS Autoscaling Not Launching Correct Instance

Question

I have an instance in AWS that I set up my entire environment (I'll call it my ready instance) on and is running perfectly. I then created a load balancer (ELB) with an autoscaling policy.

When I created a load balancer with an autoscaling policy (min of 2 instances), 2 instances sprung up. The instances were empty, however. For the launch configuration, I specified my ready instance AMI. Isn't this supposed to tell the autoscaling policy which instance to clone? In this case, shouldn't my ready instance be cloned into them and they should have the same content?

Answer 1

AN AMI image is a snapshot of an EC2 instance at the point-in-time when the AMI image was created.

The AMI associated with your EC2 instance is the AMI image used to create the instance. Everything you do to the EC2 instance since being created is not reflected in the originating AMI image.

What you are accomplishing now is creating copies of the original EC2 instance (not yours) that that AMI was created from.

To do what you want, you must configure your EC2 instance as you want it, then create a new AMI image. This is done in the AWS Management Console by selecting your EC2 instance, then choosing "Create Image" from the Actions menu. You can then use that new AMI image (with a new AMI ID) for your autoscaling.

Answer 2

Basically, you should have an AMI of the Instance first which Autoscaling will be using at the demand time.

Once after configuring the Autoscaling command line, using the autoscaling commands you have to tell Autoscaling which AMI should be used to launch an Instance at the time of demand.