Document history for the Amazon EC2 User Guide - Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud
Services or capabilities described in Amazon Web Services documentation might vary by Region. To see the differences applicable to the China Regions, see Getting Started with Amazon Web Services in China (PDF).

Document history for the Amazon EC2 User Guide

The following table describes important additions to the Amazon EC2 User Guide starting in 2019. We also update the guide frequently to address the feedback that you send us.

ChangeDescriptionDate

Instant Capacity Blocks

You can now reserve Capacity Blocks for ML, that can start as soon as 30 minutes.

November 21, 2024

Future-dated Capacity Reservations

You can now request Capacity Reservations for a future date.

November 21, 2024

Extend Capacity Block

You can now extend the duration of existing Capacity Blocks.

November 21, 2024

6 month Capacity Blocks

You can now reserve Capacity Blocks for ML for up to 6 months (182 days).

November 21, 2024

Saved filter sets

You can now create customized groups of filters and reuse them to efficiently view your EC2 resources.

November 20, 2024

Performance protection

When using attribute-based instance type selection for your EC2 Fleet or Spot Fleet, you can now enable performance protection to ensure that the selected instance types are similar to or exceed a specified performance baseline.

November 20, 2024

Capacity Reservations only

You can now specify that instances will only run in a Capacity Reservation or Capacity Reservation resource group.

November 20, 2024

Identify source AMI

You can now identify the source AMI that was used to create an AMI.

November 13, 2024

Split capacity

You can split off capacity from an existing Capacity Reservation to create a new reservation.

October 30, 2024

Move capacity

You can now move capacity from one Capacity Reservation to another.

October 30, 2024

Beginner tutorials

Two new tutorials for beginners: Launch my very first EC2 instance and Launch a test EC2 instance and connect to it.

October 21, 2024

Windows Server 2025 support

Add support for Windows Server 2025.

October 16, 2024

EC2 Global View

EC2 Global View now enables you to view Capacity Reservations and Capacity Blocks in your account across all Regions.

October 16, 2024

Live migration host maintenance

Amazon EC2 Dedicated Hosts now support live migration host maintenance, which automatically migrates supported instances from an impaired Dedicated Host to a replacement Dedicated Host without stopping and restarting them.

October 15, 2024

Billing assignment for shared Capacity Reservations

You can now assign the billing of any available capacity of a shared Capacity Reservation to a consumer account that belongs to the same Amazon organization.

October 14, 2024

PTP hardware clock - additional Region support

The PTP hardware clock is now also available in US East (Ohio) and Asia Pacific (Malaysia).

September 23, 2024

EC2 Instance Connect supports IPv6

You can now use EC2 Instance Connect to connect to the public IPv6 address of your instance.

September 23, 2024

EC2 Instance Connect prefix lists

You can now select a managed prefix list for IPv4 or IPv6 addresses when creating rules in your security groups to allow SSH traffic from the EC2 Instance Connect service.

September 23, 2024

New capabilities to manage On-Demand Capacity Reservations

You can now split your Capacity Reservation, move capacity between Capacity Reservations, and modify the instance eligibility attribute of your Capacity Reservation.

August 14, 2024

Hibernation support for C6g, C6gn, C6gd, C7g, C7gd, M6g, M6gd, M7g, M7gd, R6g, and R6gd

Hibernate your newly-launched instances running on C6g, C6gn, C6gd, C7g, C7gd, M6g, M6gd, M7g, M7gd, R6g, and R6gd instance types.

July 30, 2024

Hibernation support for AMIs that support Graviton instance types

Hibernate your newly-launched instances that were launched from an Amazon Linux or Ubuntu AMI that supports Graviton instance types.

July 30, 2024

Additional instance types supported for Credential Guard

You can now enable Credential Guard for C7i, C7-flex, M7i, M7i-flex, R7i, R7i-flex, and T3 instances.

June 26, 2024

EC2 M1 Ultra Mac instances

New general purpose instance type that features Apple M1 Ultra processors.

June 17, 2024

EC2 instance type finder – additional parameters

The EC2 instance type finder now provides additional parameters for you to specify more detailed requirements for your workload.

June 5, 2024

U7i-12tb, U7in-16tb, U7in-24tb, and U7in-32tb instances

New high memory instance types that feature 4th generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors.

May 28, 2024

New managed policy for EC2 Fast Launch

Added the EC2FastLaunchFullAccess policy to perform API actions related to the EC2 Fast Launch feature from an instance.

May 14, 2024

AMI deregistration protection

You can turn on deregistration protection on an AMI to prevent accidental or malicious deletion.

April 23, 2024

PTP hardware clock – instance type support

The PTP hardware clock is now available on C7a, C7i, M7a, M7g, M7i, R7a, and R7i instance types.

April 22, 2024

Added Nitro performance considerations for enhanced networking

This page focuses on network considerations to help with performance tuning for your Nitro based Amazon EC2 instances.

April 4, 2024

New managed policy for VSS based EBS snapshots

Amazon EC2 VSS has a new IAM managed policy available that you can add to your instance profile role to ensure that your permissions stay up-to-date and follow best practices.

March 28, 2024

PTP hardware clock – US East (N. Virginia)

The PTP hardware clock is now available in the US East (N. Virginia) Region.

March 26, 2024

Set IMDSv2 as the account default

You can set all new EC2 instance launches in your account to use Instance Metadata Service Version 2 (IMDSv2) by default.

March 25, 2024

Tag new Linux AMIs created from a snapshot

When you create a Linux AMI from a snapshot, you can tag the new AMI.

March 7, 2024

Tag new AMIs and snapshots when copying

When you copy an AMI, you can tag the new AMI and the new snapshots with the same tags, or you can tag them with different tags.

March 7, 2024

Remove Amazon Management Pack pages

The Amazon Management Pack was primarily used with Windows Server 2012 and prior. Those legacy OS platform versions are no longer supported. To manage and troubleshoot your fleet of servers running on Amazon and on-premises, see Amazon Systems Manager Fleet Manager.

February 12, 2024

EC2 Instance Connect preinstalled on macOS AMIs

EC2 Instance Connect now comes preinstalled on macOS Sonoma 14.2.1 or later, macOS Ventura 13.6.3 or later, and macOS Monterey 12.7.2 or later AMIs.

January 26, 2024

EC2 Instance Connect support for CentOS, macOS, and RHEL

You can now install EC2 Instance Connect on supported CentOS, macOS, and RHEL AMIs.

December 6, 2023

Hibernation support for C7a, C7i, R7a, R7i, and R7iz

Hibernate your newly-launched instances running on C7a, C7i, R7a, R7i, and R7iz instance types.

December 1, 2023

Amazon Q EC2 instance type selector

Amazon Q EC2 instance type selector considers your use case, workload type, and CPU manufacturer preference, as well as how you prioritize price and performance. It then uses this data to provide guidance and suggestions for Amazon EC2 instance types that are best suited for your new workloads.

November 28, 2023

Console-to-Code

Console-to-Code can help you get started with your automation code. Console-to-Code records your console actions, and then uses generative AI to suggest code in your preferred infrastructure-as code format. You can use the code as a starting point, customizing it to make it production-ready for your specific use case.

November 26, 2023

Configurable idle connection tracking timeouts

Security group connections that remain idle can lead to connection tracking exhaustion and cause connections not to be tracked and packets to be dropped. You can now set the timeout in seconds for security group connection tracking on an Elastic network interface.

November 17, 2023

PTP hardware clock

Supported instances now have a Precision Time Protocol (PTP) hardware clock. The PTP hardware clock supports either NTP or a direct PTP connection.

November 16, 2023

Change instance type of instance enabled for hibernation

You can now change the instance type of an instance enabled for hibernation when it is in the stopped state.

November 16, 2023

Instance topology

You can use the DescribeInstanceTopology API to detect the location of your instances, and then use this information to optimize HPC and ML jobs by running them on instances that are physically closer to each other.

November 13, 2023

EC2 Fast Launch shared AMI support

You can now enable EC2 Fast Launch on an AMI that's shared with you. When you enable EC2 Fast Launch on a shared AMI, the pre-provisioned snapshots for faster launching are created in your account.

November 6, 2023

Capacity Blocks for ML

You can now reserve GPU instances on a future date to support your short duration machine learning (ML) workloads.

October 31, 2023

Spot Instance hibernation

You can now hibernate your Spot Instances using the same hibernation experience and instance families that are currently available for On-Demand Instances.

October 24, 2023

Default settings for block public access for AMIs

Block public access for AMIs is now enabled by default for all new accounts and for existing accounts with no public AMIs.

October 20, 2023

Amazon EC2 Global View

Amazon EC2 Global View supports additional resource types and customizable display options.

October 18, 2023

Hibernation support for Ubuntu 22.04.2 LTS (Jammy Jellyfish)

Hibernate your newly-launched instances that were launched from the Ubuntu 22.04.2 LTS (Jammy Jellyfish) AMI.

October 16, 2023

Disable an AMI

You can disable an AMI to prevent it from being used for instance launches.

October 12, 2023

Attached EBS status checks

You can use the attached EBS status checks to monitor if the Amazon EBS volumes attached to an instance are reachable.

October 11, 2023

Hibernation support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9

Hibernate your newly-launched instances that were launched from the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 AMI.

October 2, 2023

Hibernation support for Microsoft Windows Server 2022

Hibernate your newly-launched instances that were launched from the Microsoft Windows Server 2022 AMI.

October 2, 2023

Hibernation support for AL2023

Hibernate your newly-launched instances that were launched from the AL2023 AMI.

October 2, 2023

Initiate interruption of Spot Instances in a Spot Fleet

You can select a Spot Fleet in the Amazon EC2 console and initiate an interruption of Spot Instances in the fleet so that you can test how the applications on your Spot Instances handle being interrupted.

September 21, 2023

Block public access to AMIs

You can enable block public access for AMIs at the account level to block any attempts to make your AMIs public.

September 12, 2023

Hibernation support for M7i and M7i-flex

Hibernate your newly-launched instances running on M7i and M7i-flex instance types.

August 22, 2023

EC2-Classic has been deprecated

With EC2-Classic, EC2 instances ran in a single, flat network shared with other customers. Amazon VPC replaces EC2-Classic. With Amazon VPC, your instances run in a virtual private cloud (VPC) that's logically isolated to your Amazon account.

August 8, 2023

Dedicated Hosts

You can allocate Dedicated Hosts on specific hardware assets on an Outpost.

June 20, 2023

EC2 Instance Connect Endpoint

You can now connect to an instance via SSH or RDP without requiring the instance to have a public IPv4 address.

June 13, 2023

IMDS Package Analyzer

You can now use the IMDS Packet Analyzer to identify sources of IMDSv1 calls on your EC2 instances.

June 1, 2023

EC2 Serial Console bare metal instances

The EC2 serial console now supports connectivity to the serial port of selected bare metal instances.

April 11, 2023

Launch template quotas

You can now view your quotas for launch templates and launch template versions in the Service Quotas console and by using the Service Quotas CLI.

April 3, 2023

Capacity Reservation utilization notifications

Amazon Health now sends notifications when capacity utilization for Capacity Reservations in your account drops below 20 percent.

April 3, 2023

Capacity Reservation groups

You can now add Capacity Reservations that are shared with you to Capacity Reservation groups that you own.

March 30, 2023

Modify instance metadata options

You can now use the Amazon EC2 console to modify instance metadata options.

March 20, 2023

In-place macOS operating system updates

You can now perform in-place Apple macOS operating system updates on M1 Mac instances.

March 14, 2023

UEFI preferred

You can now create a single AMI that supports both Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) and Legacy BIOS boot modes.

March 3, 2023

Modify an AMI for IMDSv2

Modify your existing AMI so that instances launched from the AMI require IMDSv2 by default.

February 28, 2023

AMI alias in launch templates

You can specify an Amazon Systems Manager parameter instead of the AMI ID in your launch templates to avoid having to update the templates every time the AMI ID changes.

January 19, 2023

Hibernation support for C6i, I3en, and M6i

Hibernate your newly-launched instances running on C6i, I3en, and M6i instance types.

December 19, 2022

Torn write prevention

Improve the performance of your I/O-intensive relational database workloads and reduce latency without negatively impacting data resiliency with torn write prevention, a block storage feature.

November 29, 2022

ENA Express

Increase throughput and minimize tail latency of network traffic between EC2 instances with ENA Express.

November 28, 2022

Copy AMI tags

When you copy an AMI, you can copy your user-defined AMI tags at the same time.

November 18, 2022

AMI size for store and restore

The size of an AMI (before compression) that can be stored and restored to and from an Amazon S3 bucket can now be up to 5,000 GB.

November 16, 2022

priceCapacityOptimized allocation strategy for Spot Instances

A Spot Fleet that uses the priceCapacityOptimized allocation strategy looks at both price and capacity to select the Spot Instances pools that are the least likely to be interrupted and have the lowest possible price.

November 10, 2022

price-capacity-optimized allocation strategy for Spot Instances

An EC2 Fleet that uses the price-capacity-optimized allocation strategy looks at both price and capacity to select the Spot Instances pools that are the least likely to be interrupted and have the lowest possible price.

November 10, 2022

Cancel having an AMI shared with your account

If an AMI has been shared with your Amazon Web Services account and you no longer want it shared with your account, you can remove your account from the AMI's launch permissions.

November 4, 2022

Transfer Elastic IP addresses

You can now transfer Elastic IP addresses from one Amazon Web Services account to another.

October 31, 2022

Replace root volume

You can replace the root Amazon EBS volume for a running instance using an AMI.

October 27, 2022

Automatically connect instance to database

Use the automatic connection feature to quickly connect one or more EC2 instances to an RDS database to allow traffic between them.

October 10, 2022

AMI quotas

Quotas now apply to creating and sharing AMIs.

October 10, 2022

Configure AMI for IMDSv2

Configure your AMI so that instances launched from the AMI require IMDSv2 by default.

October 3, 2022

Initiate Spot Instance interruption

You can select a Spot Instance in the Amazon EC2 console and initiate an interruption so that you can test how the applications on your Spot Instances handle being interrupted.

September 26, 2022

Verified AMI provider

In the Amazon EC2 console, public AMIs that are owned by Amazon or a verified Amazon partner are marked Verified provider.

July 22, 2022

Placement groups on Amazon Outposts

Added a host spread strategy for placement groups on an Outpost.

June 30, 2022

io2 Block Express volumes

You can modify the size and provisioned IOPS of io2 Block Express volumes and you can enable them for fast snapshot restore.

May 31, 2022

Dedicated Hosts on Amazon Outposts

You can allocate Dedicated Hosts on Amazon Outposts.

May 31, 2022

Instance stop protection

To prevent your instance from being accidentally stopped, you can enable stop protection for the instance.

May 24, 2022

UEFI Secure Boot

UEFI Secure Boot builds on the long-standing secure boot process of Amazon EC2 and provides additional defense-in-depth that helps customers secure software from threats that persist across reboots.

May 10, 2022

NitroTPM

Nitro Trusted Platform Module (NitroTPM) is a virtual device that is provided by the Amazon Nitro System and conforms to the TPM 2.0 specification.

May 10, 2022

AMI state change events

Amazon EC2 now generates an event when an AMI changes state. You can use Amazon EventBridge to detect and react to these events.

May 9, 2022

Describe public keys

You can query the public key and creation date of an Amazon EC2 key pair.

April 28, 2022

Create key pairs

You can specify the key format (PEM or PPK) when creating a new key pair.

April 28, 2022

Mount Amazon FSx file systems at launch

You can mount a new or existing Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP or Amazon FSx for OpenZFS file system at launch using the new launch instance wizard.

April 12, 2022

New launch instance wizard

A new and improved launch experience in the Amazon EC2 console, providing a quicker and easier way to launch an EC2 instance.

April 5, 2022

Automatically deprecate public AMIs

By default, the deprecation date of all public AMIs is set to two years from the AMI creation date.

March 31, 2022

Instance metadata category: autoscaling/target-lifecycle-state

When using Auto Scaling groups, you can access an instance's target lifecycle state from the instance metadata.

March 24, 2022

Spot placement score

Get a recommendation for an Amazon Region or Availability Zone based on your Spot capacity requirements.

March 16, 2022

AMI last launched time

The lastLaunchedTime indicates when your AMI was last used to launch an instance.

February 28, 2022

ED25519 keys

ED25519 keys are now supported for EC2 Instance Connect and EC2 Serial Console.

January 20, 2022

Attribute-based instance type selection for Spot Fleet

Specify the attributes that an instance must have, and Amazon EC2 will identify all the instance types with those attributes.

January 11, 2022

Attribute-based instance type selection for EC2 Fleet

Specify the attributes that an instance must have, and Amazon EC2 will identify all the instance types with those attributes.

January 11, 2022

Additional RHEL platforms for Capacity Reservations

Additional Red Hat Enterprise Linux platforms for On-Demand Capacity Reservations.

January 11, 2022

Configure Windows AMIs for faster launching

Configure Windows AMIs to launch instances up to 65% faster, using pre-provisioned snapshots.

January 10, 2022

Instance tags in instance metadata

You can access an instance's tags from the instance metadata.

January 6, 2022

Capacity Reservations in cluster placement groups

You can create Capacity Reservations in cluster placement groups.

January 6, 2022

Spot Fleet launch-before-terminate

Spot Fleet can terminate the Spot Instances that receive a rebalance notification after new replacement Spot Instances are launched.

November 4, 2021

EC2 Fleet launch-before-terminate

EC2 Fleet can terminate the Spot Instances that receive a rebalance notification after new replacement Spot Instances are launched.

November 4, 2021

Compare timestamps

You can determine the true time of an event by comparing the timestamp of your Amazon EC2 Linux instance with ClockBound.

November 2, 2021

Share AMIs with organizations and OUs

You can now share AMIs with the following Amazon resources: organizations and organizational units (OUs).

October 29, 2021

On-Demand Capacity Reservation Fleet

You can use a Capacity Reservation Fleet to launch a group, or fleet, of Capacity Reservations.

October 5, 2021

Hibernation support for Ubuntu 20.04 LTS - Focal

Hibernate your newly-launched instances that were launched from the Ubuntu 20.04 LTS - Focal AMI.

October 4, 2021

T3 instances on Dedicated Hosts

Support for T3 instances on Amazon EC2 Dedicated Host.

September 14, 2021

Hibernation support for RHEL, Fedora, and CentOS

Hibernate your newly-launched instances that were launched from RHEL, Fedora, and CentOS AMIs.

September 9, 2021

Amazon EC2 Global View

Amazon EC2 Global View enables you to view VPCs, subnets, instances, security groups, and volumes across multiple Amazon Regions in a single console.

September 1, 2021

AMI deprecation support for Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager

Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager EBS-backed AMI policies can deprecate AMIs. The AWSDataLifecycleManagerServiceRoleForAMIManagement Amazon managed policy has been updated to support this feature.

August 23, 2021

Hibernation support for C5d, M5d, and R5d

Hibernate your newly-launched instances running on C5d, M5d, and R5d instance types.

August 19, 2021

Amazon EC2 key pairs

Amazon EC2 now supports ED25519 keys on Linux and Mac instances.

August 17, 2021

Prefixes for network interfaces

You can assign a private IPv4 or IPv6 CIDR range, either automatically or manually, to your network interfaces.

July 22, 2021

Event windows

You can define custom, weekly-recurring event windows for scheduled events that reboot, stop, or terminate your Amazon EC2 instances.

July 15, 2021

Resource IDs and tagging support for security group rules

You can refer to security group rules by resource ID. You can also add tags to your security group rules.

July 7, 2021

Deprecate an AMI

You can now specify when an AMI is deprecated.

June 11, 2021

Windows per-second billing

Amazon EC2 charges for Windows- and SQL Server-based usage by the second, with a one-minute minimum charge.

June 10, 2021

Root volume replacement

You can now use root volume replacement tasks to replace the root EBS volume for running instances.

April 22, 2021

Store and restore an AMI using S3

Store EBS-backed AMIs in S3 and restore them from S3 to enable cross-partition copying of AMIs.

April 6, 2021

EC2 Serial Console

Troubleshoot boot and network connectivity issues by establishing a connection to the serial port of an instance.

March 30, 2021

Boot modes

Amazon EC2 now supports UEFI boot on selected AMD- and Intel-based EC2 instances.

March 22, 2021

Create a reverse DNS record

You can now set up reverse DNS lookup for your Elastic IP addresses.

February 3, 2021

Tag AMIs and snapshots on AMI creation

When you create an AMI, you can tag the AMI and the snapshots with the same tags, or you can tag them with different tags.

December 4, 2020

Use Amazon EventBridge to monitor Spot Fleet events

Create EventBridge rules that trigger programmatic actions in response to Spot Fleet state changes and errors.

November 20, 2020

Use Amazon EventBridge to monitor EC2 Fleet events

Create EventBridge rules that trigger programmatic actions in response to EC2 Fleet state changes and errors.

November 20, 2020

Delete instant fleets

Delete an EC2 Fleet of type instant and terminate all the instances in the fleet in a single API call.

November 18, 2020

Hibernation support for T3 and T3a

Hibernate your newly-launched instances running on T3 and T3a instance types.

November 17, 2020

Amazon EFS Quick Create

You can create and mount an Amazon EFS file system to an instance at launch using Amazon EFS Quick Create.

November 9, 2020

Capacity Reservations in Wavelength Zones

Capacity Reservations can now be created and used in Wavelength Zones.

November 4, 2020

Hibernation support for I3, M5ad, and R5ad

Hibernate your newly-launched instances running on I3, M5ad, and R5ad instance types.

October 21, 2020

Spot Instance vCPU limits

Spot Instance limits are now managed in terms of the number of vCPUs that your running Spot Instances are either using or will use pending the fulfillment of open requests.

October 1, 2020

Capacity Reservations in Local Zones

Capacity Reservations can now be created and used in Local Zones.

September 30, 2020

Hibernation support for M5a and R5a

Hibernate your newly-launched instances running on M5a and R5a instance types.

August 28, 2020

Instance metadata provides instance location and placement information

New instance metadata fields under the placement category: Region, placement group name, partition number, host ID, and Availability Zone ID.

August 24, 2020

Capacity Reservation groups

You can use Amazon Resource Groups to create logical collections of Capacity Reservations, and then target instance launches into those groups.

July 29, 2020

EC2Launch v2

You can use EC2Launch v2 to perform tasks during instance startup, if an instance is stopped and later started, if an instance is restarted, and on demand. EC2Launch v2 supports all versions of Windows Server and replaces EC2Launch and EC2Config.

June 30, 2020

Bring your own IPv6 addresses

You can bring part or all of your IPv6 address range from your on-premises network to your Amazon account.

May 21, 2020

Launch instances using a Systems Manager parameter

You can specify a Amazon Systems Manager parameter instead of an AMI when you launch an instance.

May 5, 2020

Amazon Linux 2 Kernel Live Patching

Kernel Live Patching for Amazon Linux 2 enables you to apply security vulnerability and critical bug patches to a running Linux kernel, without reboots or disruptions to running applications.

April 28, 2020

Stop and start a Spot Instance

Stop your Spot Instances backed by Amazon EBS and start them at will, instead of relying on the stop interruption behavior.

January 13, 2020

Resource tagging

You can tag egress-only internet gateways, local gateways, local gateway route tables, local gateway virtual interfaces, local gateway virtual interface groups, local gateway route table VPC associations, and local gateway route table virtual interface group associations.

January 10, 2020

Connect to your instance using Session Manager

You can start a Session Manager session with an instance from the Amazon EC2 console.

December 18, 2019

Default credit specification at the account level

You can set the default credit specification per burstable performance instance family at the account level per Amazon Region.

November 25, 2019

Instance type discovery

You can find an instance type that meets your needs.

November 22, 2019

Dedicated Hosts

You can now configure a Dedicated Host to support multiple instance types in an instance family.

November 21, 2019

Instance Metadata Service Version 2

You can use Instance Metadata Service Version 2, which is a session-oriented method for requesting instance metadata.

November 19, 2019

Hibernation support for On-Demand Windows instances

You can hibernate On-Demand Windows instances.

October 14, 2019

Queued purchases of Reserved Instances

You can queue the purchase of a Reserved Instance up to three years in advance.

October 4, 2019

Diagnostic interrupt

You can send a diagnostic interrupt to an unreachable or unresponsive instance to trigger a kernel panic.

August 14, 2019

Capacity optimized allocation strategy

Using EC2 Fleet or Spot Fleet, you can launch Spot Instances from Spot pools with optimal capacity for the number of instances that are launching.

August 12, 2019

Elastic Fabric Adapter

EFA now supports Open MPI 3.1.4 and Intel MPI 2019 Update 4.

July 26, 2019

EC2 Instance Connect

EC2 Instance Connect is a simple and secure way to connect to your instances using Secure Shell (SSH).

June 27, 2019

Host recovery

Automatically restart your instances on a new host in the event of an unexpected hardware failure on a Dedicated Host.

June 5, 2019

VSS application-consistent snapshots

Take application-consistent snapshots of all Amazon EBS volumes attached to your Windows instances using Amazon Systems Manager Run Command.

May 13, 2019

Windows to Linux Replatforming Assistant for Microsoft SQL Server Databases

Move existing Microsoft SQL Server workloads from a Windows to a Linux operating system. Updated link points to the Microsoft SQL Server on Amazon EC2 User Guide.

May 8, 2019

Windows Automated Upgrade

Perform automated upgrades of EC2 Windows instances using Amazon Systems Manager.

May 6, 2019

For information about the instance type releases for Amazon EC2, see Document history in the Amazon EC2 Instance Types Guide.

History for 2018 and earlier

The following table describes important additions to the Amazon EC2 User Guide in 2018 and earlier years.

Feature API version Description Release date
Partition placement groups 2016-11-15 Partition placement groups spread instances across logical partitions, ensuring that instances in one partition do not share underlying hardware with instances in other partitions. For more information, see Partition placement groups. 20 December 2018
Hibernate EC2 Linux instances 2016-11-15 You can hibernate a Linux instance if it's enabled for hibernation and it meets the hibernation prerequisites. For more information, see Hibernate your Amazon EC2 instance. 28 November 2018
Amazon Elastic Inference Accelerators 2016-11-15 You can attach an Amazon EI accelerator to your instances to add GPU-powered acceleration to reduce the cost of running deep learning inference. 28 November 2018
Spot console recommends a fleet of instances 2016-11-15

The Spot console recommends a fleet of instances based on Spot best practice (instance diversification) to meet the minimum hardware specifications (vCPUs, memory, and storage) for your application need. For more information, see Create a Spot Fleet.

20 November 2018
New EC2 Fleet request type: instant 2016-11-15 EC2 Fleet now supports a new request type, instant, that you can use to synchronously provision capacity across instance types and purchase models. The instant request returns the launched instances in the API response, and takes no further action, enabling you to control if and when instances are launched. For more information, see EC2 Fleet and Spot Fleet request types. 14 November 2018
Spot savings information 2016-11-15 You can view the savings made from using Spot Instances for a single Spot Fleet or for all Spot Instances. For more information, see Savings from purchasing Spot Instances. 5 November 2018
Console support for optimizing CPU options 2016-11-15 When you launch an instance, you can optimize the CPU options to suit specific workloads or business needs using the Amazon EC2 console. For more information, see CPU options for Amazon EC2 instances. 31 October 2018
Console support for creating a launch template from an instance 2016-11-15 You can create a launch template using an instance as the basis for a new launch template using the Amazon EC2 console. For more information, see Create an Amazon EC2 launch template. 30 October 2018
On-Demand Capacity Reservations 2016-11-15 You can reserve capacity for your Amazon EC2 instances in a specific Availability Zone for any duration. This allows you to create and manage capacity reservations independently from the billing discounts offered by Reserved Instances (RI). For more information, see Reserve compute capacity with EC2 On-Demand Capacity Reservations. 25 October 2018
Bring Your Own IP Addresses (BYOIP) 2016-11-15 You can bring part or all of your public IPv4 address range from your on-premises network to your Amazon account. After you bring the address range to Amazon, it appears in your account as an address pool. You can create an Elastic IP address from your address pool and use it with your Amazon resources. For more information, see Bring your own IP addresses (BYOIP) to Amazon EC2. 23 October 2018
Dedicated Host tag on create and console support

2016-11-15

You can tag your Dedicated Hosts on creation, and you can manage your Dedicated Host tags using the Amazon EC2 console. For more information, see Allocate an Amazon EC2 Dedicated Host for use in your account.

22 October 2018
Console support for scheduled scaling for Spot Fleet 2016-11-15 Increase or decrease the current capacity of the fleet based on the date and time. For more information, see Scheduled scaling: Scale Spot Fleet on a schedule. 20 September 2018
Allocation strategies for EC2 Fleets

2016-11-15

You can specify whether On-Demand capacity is fulfilled by price (lowest price first) or priority (highest priority first). You can specify the number of Spot pools across which to allocate your target Spot capacity. For more information, see Use allocation strategies to determine how EC2 Fleet or Spot Fleet fulfills Spot and On-Demand capacity.

26 July 2018
Allocation strategies for Spot Fleets

2016-11-15

You can specify whether On-Demand capacity is fulfilled by price (lowest price first) or priority (highest priority first). You can specify the number of Spot pools across which to allocate your target Spot capacity. For more information, see Use allocation strategies to determine how EC2 Fleet or Spot Fleet fulfills Spot and On-Demand capacity.

26 July 2018
Automate snapshot lifecycle

2016-11-15

You can use Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager to automate creation and deletion of snapshots for your EBS volumes. For more information, see Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager.

12 July 2018
Launch template CPU options

2016-11-15

When you create a launch template using the command line tools, you can optimize the CPU options to suit specific workloads or business needs. For more information, see Create an Amazon EC2 launch template.

11 July 2018
Tag Dedicated Hosts

2016-11-15

You can tag your Dedicated Hosts.

5 July 2018

Get latest console output

2016-11-15

You can retrieve the latest console output for some instance types when you use the get-console-output Amazon CLI command.

9 May 2018

Optimize CPU options

2016-11-15

When you launch an instance, you can optimize the CPU options to suit specific workloads or business needs. For more information, see CPU options for Amazon EC2 instances.

8 May 2018

EC2 Fleet

2016-11-15

You can use EC2 Fleet to launch a group of instances across different EC2 instance types and Availability Zones, and across On-Demand Instance, Reserved Instance, and Spot Instance purchasing models. For more information, see EC2 Fleet and Spot Fleet.

2 May 2018

On-Demand Instances in Spot Fleets

2016-11-15

You can include a request for On-Demand capacity in your Spot Fleet request to ensure that you always have instance capacity. For more information, see EC2 Fleet and Spot Fleet.

2 May 2018

Tag EBS snapshots on creation

2016-11-15

You can apply tags to snapshots during creation.

2 April 2018

Change placement groups

2016-11-15

You can move an instance in or out of a placement group, or change its placement group. For more information, see Change the placement for an EC2 instance.

1 March 2018

Longer resource IDs

2016-11-15

You can enable the longer ID format for more resource types.

9 February 2018

Network performance improvements

2016-11-15

Instances outside of a cluster placement group can now benefit from increased bandwidth when sending or receiving network traffic between other instances or Amazon S3.

24 January 2018

Tag Elastic IP addresses

2016-11-15

You can tag your Elastic IP addresses.

21 December 2017
Amazon Time Sync Service

2016-11-15

You can use the Amazon Time Sync Service to keep accurate time on your instance. For more information, see Precision clock and time synchronization on your EC2 instance.

29 November 2017
T2 Unlimited

2016-11-15

T2 Unlimited instances can burst above the baseline for as long as required. For more information, see Burstable performance instances.

29 November 2017
Launch templates

2016-11-15

A launch template can contain all or some of the parameters to launch an instance, so that you don't have to specify them every time you launch an instance. For more information, see Store instance launch parameters in Amazon EC2 launch templates.

29 November 2017
Spread placement

2016-11-15

Spread placement groups are recommended for applications that have a small number of critical instances that should be kept separate from each other. For more information, see Spread placement groups.

29 November 2017
Spot Instance hibernation

2016-11-15

The Spot service can hibernate Spot Instances in the event of an interruption. For more information, see Hibernate interrupted Spot Instances.

28 November 2017
Spot Fleet target tracking

2016-11-15

You can set up target tracking scaling policies for your Spot Fleet. For more information, see Target tracking scaling: Scale Spot Fleet by targeting a value for a specific metric.

17 November 2017
Spot Fleet integrates with Elastic Load Balancing

2016-11-15

You can attach one or more load balancers to a Spot Fleet.

10 November 2017

Merge and split Convertible Reserved Instances

2016-11-15

You can exchange (merge) two or more Convertible Reserved Instances for a new Convertible Reserved Instance. You can also use the modification process to split a Convertible Reserved Instance into smaller reservations. For more information, see Exchange Convertible Reserved Instances.

6 November 2017

Modify VPC tenancy

2016-11-15

You can change the instance tenancy attribute of a VPC from dedicated to default. For more information, see Change the instance tenancy of a VPC.

16 October 2017

Per second billing

2016-11-15

Amazon EC2 charges for Linux-based usage by the second, with a one-minute minimum charge.

2 October 2017

Stop on interruption

2016-11-15

You can specify whether Amazon EC2 should stop or terminate Spot Instances when they are interrupted. For more information, see Behavior of Spot Instance interruptions.

18 September 2017

Tag NAT gateways

2016-11-15

You can tag your NAT gateway. For more information, see Tag your resources.

7 September 2017

Security group rule descriptions

2016-11-15

You can add descriptions to your security group rules.

31 August 2017

Elastic Graphics

2016-11-15

Attach Elastic Graphics accelerators to your instances to accelerate the graphics performance of your applications.

29 August 2017

Recover Elastic IP addresses

2016-11-15

If you release an Elastic IP address for use in a VPC, you might be able to recover it.

11 August 2017

Tag Spot Fleet instances

2016-11-15

You can configure your Spot Fleet to automatically tag the instances that it launches.

24 July 2017

Tag resources during creation

2016-11-15

You can apply tags to instances and volumes during creation. For more information, see Tag your resources. In addition, you can use tag-based resource-level permissions to control the tags that are applied. For more information see, Grant permission to tag Amazon EC2 resources during creation.

28 March 2017

Perform modifications on attached EBS volumes

2016-11-15

With most EBS volumes attached to most EC2 instances, you can modify volume size, type, and IOPS without detaching the volume or stopping the instance.

13 February 2017

Attach an IAM role

2016-11-15

You can attach, detach, or replace an IAM role for an existing instance. For more information, see IAM roles for Amazon EC2.

9 February 2017

Dedicated Spot Instances

2016-11-15

You can run Spot Instances on single-tenant hardware in a virtual private cloud (VPC). For more information, see Launch on single-tenant hardware.

19 January 2017

IPv6 support

2016-11-15

You can associate an IPv6 CIDR with your VPC and subnets, and assign IPv6 addresses to instances in your VPC. For more information, see Amazon EC2 instance IP addressing.

1 December 2016

Automatic scaling for Spot Fleet

You can now set up scaling policies for your Spot Fleet. For more information, see Understand automatic scaling for Spot Fleet.

1 September 2016

Elastic Network Adapter (ENA)

2016-04-01

You can now use ENA for enhanced networking. For more information, see Enhanced networking on Amazon EC2 instances.

28 June 2016

Enhanced support for viewing and modifying longer IDs

2016-04-01

You can now view and modify longer ID settings for other IAM users, IAM roles, or the root user.

23 June 2016

Copy encrypted Amazon EBS snapshots between Amazon accounts

2016-04-01

You can now copy encrypted EBS snapshots between Amazon accounts.

21 June 2016

Capture a screenshot of an instance console

2015-10-01

You can now obtain additional information when debugging instances that are unreachable. For more information, see Capture a screenshot of an unreachable instance.

24 May 2016

Two new EBS volume types

2015-10-01

You can now create Throughput Optimized HDD (st1) and Cold HDD (sc1) volumes.

19 April 2016

Added new NetworkPacketsIn and NetworkPacketsOut metrics for Amazon EC2

Added new NetworkPacketsIn and NetworkPacketsOut metrics for Amazon EC2. For more information, see Instance metrics.

23 March 2016

CloudWatch metrics for Spot Fleet

You can now get CloudWatch metrics for your Spot Fleet. For more information, see Monitor your EC2 Fleet or Spot Fleet using CloudWatch.

21 March 2016

Scheduled Instances

2015-10-01

Scheduled Reserved Instances (Scheduled Instances) enable you to purchase capacity reservations that recur on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis, with a specified start time and duration.

13 January 2016

Longer resource IDs

2015-10-01

We're gradually introducing longer length IDs for some Amazon EC2 and Amazon EBS resource types. During the opt-in period, you can enable the longer ID format for supported resource types.

13 January 2016

ClassicLink DNS support

2015-10-01

You can enable ClassicLink DNS support for your VPC so that DNS hostnames that are addressed between linked EC2-Classic instances and instances in the VPC resolve to private IP addresses and not public IP addresses.

11 January 2016

Dedicated hosts

2015-10-01

An Amazon EC2 Dedicated host is a physical server with instance capacity dedicated for your use. For more information, see Amazon EC2 Dedicated Hosts.

23 November 2015

Spot Instance duration

2015-10-01

You can now specify a duration for your Spot Instances. Spot blocks is not supported (January 2023).

6 October 2015

Spot Fleet modify request

2015-10-01

You can now modify the target capacity of your Spot Fleet request. For more information, see Modify a Spot Fleet request.

29 September 2015

Spot Fleet diversified allocation strategy

2015-04-15

You can now allocate Spot Instances in multiple Spot pools using a single Spot Fleet request. For more information, see Use allocation strategies to determine how EC2 Fleet or Spot Fleet fulfills Spot and On-Demand capacity.

15 September 2015

Spot Fleet instance weighting

2015-04-15

You can now define the capacity units that each instance type contributes to your application's performance, and adjust the amount you are willing to pay for Spot Instances for each Spot pool accordingly. For more information, see Use instance weighting to manage cost and performance of your EC2 Fleet or Spot Fleet.

31 August 2015

New reboot alarm action and new IAM role for use with alarm actions

Added the reboot alarm action and new IAM role for use with alarm actions. For more information, see Create alarms that stop, terminate, reboot, or recover an instance.

23 July 2015

Spot Fleets

2015-04-15

You can manage a collection, or fleet, of Spot Instances instead of managing separate Spot Instance requests. For more information, see EC2 Fleet and Spot Fleet.

18 May 2015

Migrate Elastic IP addresses to EC2-Classic

2015-04-15

You can migrate an Elastic IP address that you've allocated for use in EC2-Classic to be used in a VPC..

15 May 2015

Importing VMs with multiple disks as AMIs

2015-03-01

The VM Import process now supports importing VMs with multiple disks as AMIs. For more information, see Importing a VM as an Image Using VM Import/Export in the VM Import/Export User Guide .

23 April 2015

Systems Manager

Systems Manager enables you to configure and manage your EC2 instances.

17 February 2015

Systems Manager for Microsoft SCVMM 1.5

You can now use Systems Manager for Microsoft SCVMM to launch an instance and to import a VM from SCVMM to Amazon EC2.

21 January 2015

Automatic recovery for EC2 instances

You can create an Amazon CloudWatch alarm that monitors an Amazon EC2 instance and automatically recovers the instance if it becomes impaired due to an underlying hardware failure or a problem that requires Amazon involvement to repair. A recovered instance is identical to the original instance, including the instance ID, IP addresses, and all instance metadata.

For more information, see Instance resiliency.

12 January 2015

ClassicLink

2014-10-01

ClassicLink enables you to link your EC2-Classic instance to a VPC in your account. You can associate VPC security groups with the EC2-Classic instance, enabling communication between your EC2-Classic instance and instances in your VPC using private IP addresses.

7 January 2015

Spot Instance termination notices

The best way to protect against Spot Instance interruption is to architect your application to be fault tolerant. In addition, you can take advantage of Spot Instance termination notices, which provide a two-minute warning before Amazon EC2 must terminate your Spot Instance.

For more information, see Spot Instance interruption notices.

5 January 2015

Systems Manager for Microsoft SCVMM

Systems Manager for Microsoft SCVMM provides a simple, easy-to-use interface for managing Amazon resources, such as EC2 instances, from Microsoft SCVMM.

29 October 2014

DescribeVolumes pagination support

2014-09-01

The DescribeVolumes API call now supports the pagination of results with the MaxResults and NextToken parameters. For more information, see DescribeVolumes in the Amazon EC2 API Reference.

23 October 2014

Added support for Amazon CloudWatch Logs

You can use Amazon CloudWatch Logs to monitor, store, and access your system, application, and custom log files from your instances or other sources. You can then retrieve the associated log data from CloudWatch Logs using the Amazon CloudWatch console, the CloudWatch Logs commands in the Amazon CLI, or the CloudWatch Logs SDK.

10 July 2014

New EC2 Service Limits page

Use the EC2 Service Limits page in the Amazon EC2 console to view the current limits for resources provided by Amazon EC2 and Amazon VPC, on a per-region basis.

19 June 2014

Amazon EBS General Purpose SSD Volumes

2014-05-01

General Purpose SSD volumes offer cost-effective storage that is ideal for a broad range of workloads. These volumes deliver single-digit millisecond latencies, the ability to burst to 3,000 IOPS for extended periods of time, and a base performance of 3 IOPS/GiB. General Purpose SSD volumes can range in size from 1 GiB to 1 TiB.

16 June 2014

Amazon Management Pack

Amazon Management Pack now supports for System Center Operations Manager 2012 R2.

22 May 2014

Amazon EBS encryption

2014-05-01

Amazon EBS encryption offers seamless encryption of EBS data volumes and snapshots, eliminating the need to build and maintain a secure key management infrastructure. EBS encryption enables data at rest security by encrypting your data using Amazon managed keys. The encryption occurs on the servers that host EC2 instances, providing encryption of data as it moves between EC2 instances and EBS storage.

21 May 2014

Importing Linux virtual machines

2013-10-15

The VM Import process now supports the importation of Linux instances. For more information, see the VM Import/Export User Guide.

16 December 2013

Resource-level permissions for RunInstances

2013-10-15

You can now create policies in Amazon Identity and Access Management to control resource-level permissions for the Amazon EC2 RunInstances API action. For more information and example policies, see Identity and access management for Amazon EC2.

20 November 2013

Launching an instance from the Amazon Web Services Marketplace

You can now launch an instance from the Amazon Web Services Marketplace using the Amazon EC2 launch wizard. For more information, see Launch an Amazon EC2 instance from an Amazon Web Services Marketplace AMI.

11 November 2013

New launch wizard

There is a new and redesigned EC2 launch wizard. For more information, see Launch an EC2 instance using the launch instance wizard in the console.

10 October 2013

Modifying instance types of Reserved Instances

2013-10-01

You can now modify the instance type of Linux Reserved Instances within the same family (for example, M1, M2, M3, C1). For more information, see Modify Reserved Instances.

09 October 2013

Modifying Amazon EC2 Reserved Instances

2013-08-15

You can now modify Reserved Instances in a Region. For more information, see Modify Reserved Instances.

11 September 2013

Assigning a public IP address

2013-07-15

You can now assign a public IP address when you launch an instance in a VPC. For more information, see Assign a public IPv4 address during instance launch.

20 August 2013

Granting resource-level permissions

2013-06-15

Amazon EC2 supports new Amazon Resource Names (ARNs) and condition keys. For more information, see Identity-based policies for Amazon EC2.

8 July 2013

Incremental Snapshot Copies

2013-02-01

You can now perform incremental snapshot copies.

11 June 2013

Amazon Management Pack

The Amazon Management Pack links Amazon EC2 instances and the Windows or Linux operating systems running inside them. The Amazon Management Pack is an extension to Microsoft System Center Operations Manager.

8 May 2013

New Tags page

There is a new Tags page in the Amazon EC2 console. For more information, see Tag your Amazon EC2 resources.

04 April 2013

Copy an AMI from one Region to another

2013-02-01

You can copy an AMI from one Region to another, enabling you to launch consistent instances in more than one Amazon Region quickly and easily.

For more information, see Copy an Amazon EC2 AMI.

11 March 2013

Launch instances into a default VPC

2013-02-01

Your Amazon account is capable of launching instances into either EC2-Classic or a VPC, or only into a VPC, on a region-by-region basis. If you can launch instances only into a VPC, we create a default VPC for you. When you launch an instance, we launch it into your default VPC, unless you create a nondefault VPC and specify it when you launch the instance.

11 March 2013

EBS snapshot copy

2012-12-01

You can use snapshot copies to create backups of data, to create new Amazon EBS volumes, or to create Amazon Machine Images (AMIs).

17 December 2012

Updated EBS metrics and status checks for Provisioned IOPS SSD volumes

2012-10-01

Updated the EBS metrics to include two new metrics for Provisioned IOPS SSD volumes. Also added new status checks for Provisioned IOPS SSD volumes.

20 November 2012

Spot Instance request status

2012-10-01

Spot Instance request status makes it easy to determine the state of your Spot requests.

14 October 2012
Amazon EC2 Reserved Instance Marketplace 2012-08-15 The Reserved Instance Marketplace matches sellers who have Amazon EC2 Reserved Instances that they no longer need with buyers who are looking to purchase additional capacity. Reserved Instances bought and sold through the Reserved Instance Marketplace work like any other Reserved Instances, except that they can have less than a full standard term remaining and can be sold at different prices.

11 September 2012

Provisioned IOPS SSD for Amazon EBS

2012-07-20

Provisioned IOPS SSD volumes deliver predictable, high performance for I/O intensive workloads, such as database applications, that rely on consistent and fast response times.

31 July 2012

IAM roles on Amazon EC2 instances

2012-06-01

IAM roles for Amazon EC2 provide:

  • Amazon access keys for applications running on Amazon EC2 instances.

  • Automatic rotation of the Amazon access keys on the Amazon EC2 instance.

  • Granular permissions for applications running on Amazon EC2 instances that make requests to your Amazon services.

11 June 2012

Spot Instance features that make it easier to get started and handle the potential of interruption.

You can now manage your Spot Instances as follows:

  • Specify the amount you are willing to pay for Spot Instances using Auto Scaling launch configurations, and set up a schedule for specifying the amount you are willing to pay for Spot Instances. For more information, see Launching Spot Instances in Your Auto Scaling Group in the Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling User Guide.

  • Get notifications when instances are launched or terminated.

  • Use Amazon CloudFormation templates to launch Spot Instances in a stack with Amazon resources.

7 June 2012

EC2 instance export and timestamps for status checks for Amazon EC2

2012-05-01

Added support for exporting Windows Server instances that you originally imported into EC2.

Added support for timestamps on instance status and system status to indicate the date and time that a status check failed.

25 May 2012

EC2 instance export, and timestamps in instance and system status checks for Amazon VPC

2012-05-01

Added support for EC2 instance export to Citrix Xen, Microsoft Hyper-V, and VMware vSphere.

Added support for timestamps in instance and system status checks.

25 May 2012

Amazon Web Services Marketplace AMIs

2012-04-01

Added support for Amazon Web Services Marketplace AMIs.

19 April 2012

Reserved Instance pricing tiers

2011-12-15

Added a new section discussing how to take advantage of the discount pricing that is built into the Reserved Instance pricing tiers.

5 March 2012

Elastic Network Interfaces (ENIs) for EC2 instances in Amazon Virtual Private Cloud

2011-12-01

Added new section about elastic network interfaces (ENIs) for EC2 instances in a VPC. For more information, see Elastic network interfaces.

21 December 2011

New offering types for Amazon EC2 Reserved Instances

2011-11-01

You can choose from a variety of Reserved Instance offerings that address your projected use of the instance.

01 December 2011

Amazon EC2 instance status

2011-11-01

You can view additional details about the status of your instances, including scheduled events planned by Amazon that might have an impact on your instances. These operational activities include instance reboots required to apply software updates or security patches, or instance retirements required where there are hardware issues. For more information, see Monitor the status of your Amazon EC2 instances.

16 November 2011

Spot Instances in Amazon VPC

2011-07-15

Added information about the support for Spot Instances in Amazon VPC. With this update, users can launch Spot Instances a virtual private cloud (VPC). By launching Spot Instances in a VPC, users of Spot Instances can enjoy the benefits of Amazon VPC.

11 October 2011

Simplified VM import process for users of the CLI tools

2011-07-15

The VM Import process is simplified with the enhanced functionality of ImportInstance and ImportVolume, which now will perform the upload of the images into Amazon EC2 after creating the import task. In addition, with the introduction of ResumeImport, users can restart an incomplete upload at the point the task stopped.

15 September 2011

Support for importing in VHD file format

VM Import can now import virtual machine image files in VHD format. The VHD file format is compatible with the Citrix Xen and Microsoft Hyper-V virtualization platforms. With this release, VM Import now supports RAW, VHD and VMDK (VMware ESX-compatible) image formats. For more information, see the VM Import/Export User Guide.

24 August 2011

Update to the Amazon EC2 VM Import Connector for VMware vCenter

Added information about the 1.1 version of the Amazon EC2 VM Import Connector for VMware vCenter virtual appliance (Connector). This update includes proxy support for Internet access, better error handling, improved task progress bar accuracy, and several bug fixes.

27 June 2011

Spot Instances Availability Zone pricing changes

2011-05-15

Added information about the Spot Instances Availability Zone pricing feature. In this release, we've added new Availability Zone pricing options as part of the information returned when you query for Spot Instance requests and Spot price history. These additions make it easier to determine the price required to launch a Spot Instance into a particular Availability Zone.

26 May 2011

Amazon Identity and Access Management

Added information about Amazon Identity and Access Management (IAM), which enables users to specify which Amazon EC2 actions a user can use with Amazon EC2 resources in general. For more information, see Identity and access management for Amazon EC2.

26 April 2011

Dedicated instances

Launched within your Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC), Dedicated Instances are instances that are physically isolated at the host hardware level. Dedicated Instances let you take advantage of Amazon VPC and the Amazon cloud, with benefits including on-demand elastic provisioning and pay only for what you use, while isolating your Amazon EC2 compute instances at the hardware level. For more information, see Amazon EC2 Dedicated Instances.

27 March 2011

Reserved Instances updates to the Amazon Management Console

Updates to the Amazon Management Console make it easier for users to view their Reserved Instances and purchase additional Reserved Instances, including Dedicated Reserved Instances.

27 March 2011

Metadata information

2011-01-01

Added information about metadata to reflect changes in the 2011-01-01 release. For more information, see Use instance metadata to manage your EC2 instance and Instance metadata categories.

11 March 2011

Amazon EC2 VM Import Connector for VMware vCenter

Added information about the Amazon EC2 VM Import Connector for VMware vCenter virtual appliance (Connector). The Connector is a plug-in for VMware vCenter that integrates with VMware vSphere Client and provides a graphical user interface that you can use to import your VMware virtual machines to Amazon EC2.

3 March 2011

Force volume detachment

You can now use the Amazon Web Services Management Console to force the detachment of an Amazon EBS volume from an instance.

23 February 2011

Instance termination protection

You can now use the Amazon Management Console to prevent an instance from being terminated. For more information, see Enable termination protection.

23 February 2011

VM Import

2010-11-15

Added information about VM Import, which allows you to import a virtual machine or volume into Amazon EC2. For more information, see the VM Import/Export User Guide.

15 December 2010

Basic monitoring for instances

2010-08-31

Added information about basic monitoring for EC2 instances.

12 December 2010

Filters and Tags

2010-08-31

Added information about listing, filtering, and tagging resources. For more information, see Find your Amazon EC2 resources and Tag your Amazon EC2 resources.

19 September 2010

Idempotent Instance Launch

2010-08-31

Added information about ensuring idempotency when running instances.

19 September 2010

Amazon Identity and Access Management for Amazon EC2

Amazon EC2 now integrates with Amazon Identity and Access Management (IAM). For more information, see Identity and access management for Amazon EC2.

2 September 2010

Amazon VPC IP Address Designation

2010-06-15

Amazon VPC users can now specify the IP address to assign an instance launched in a VPC.

12 July 2010

Amazon CloudWatch monitoring for Amazon EBS Volumes

Amazon CloudWatch monitoring is now automatically available for Amazon EBS volumes.

14 June 2010

Reserved Instances with Windows

Amazon EC2 now supports Reserved Instances with Windows.

22 February 2010