Amazon Machine Image (AMI)
An Amazon Machine Image (AMI) is a pre-configured template for Amazon EC2 instances, provided by Amazon Web Services, that packages the operating system and software needed to launch an instance.
Key points
- Lets a user deploy an EC2 instance that has already been configured, rather than configuring one from scratch.
- Commonly used as part of disaster recovery solutions, since a known-good instance configuration can be redeployed quickly.
- Built and managed at scale using EC2 Image Builder.
- An AMI is specific to a Region, operating system, processor architecture, root volume type, and virtualization type — it can’t be used interchangeably across those dimensions.