Create an AMI lifecycle policy Considerations for AMI lifecycle policies Additional resources

Automate AMI lifecycles

The following procedure shows you how to use Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager to automate EBS-backed AMI lifecycles.

Topics

Create an AMI lifecycle policy
Considerations for AMI lifecycle policies
Additional resources

Create an AMI lifecycle policy

Use one of the following procedures to create an AMI lifecycle policy.

Console

To create an AMI policy

Open the Amazon EC2 console at https://console.amazonaws.cn/ec2/.
In the navigation pane, choose Elastic Block Store, Lifecycle Manager, and then choose Create lifecycle policy.
On the Select policy type screen, choose EBS-backed AMI policy, and then choose Next.
In the Target resources section, for Target resource tags, choose the resource tags that identify the volumes or instances to back up. The policy backs up only the resources that have the specified tag key and value pairs.
For Description, enter a brief description for the policy.
For IAM role, choose the IAM role that has permissions to manage AMIs and snapshot and to describe instances. To use the default role provided by Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager, choose Default role. Alternatively, to use a custom IAM role that you previously created, choose Choose another role, and then select the role to use.
For Policy tags, add the tags to apply to the lifecycle policy. You can use these tags to identify and categorize your policies.
For Policy status after creation, choose Enable policy to start running the policy at the next scheduled time, or Disable policy to prevent the policy from running. If you do not enable the policy now, it will not start creating AMIs until you manually enable it after creation.
In the Instance reboot section, indicate whether instances should be rebooted before AMI creation. To prevent the targeted instances from being rebooted, choose No. Choosing No could cause data consistency issues. To reboot instances before AMI creation, choose Yes. Choosing this ensures data consistency, but could result in multiple targeted instances rebooting simultaneously.
Choose Next.
On the Configure schedule screen, configure the policy schedules. A policy can have up to four schedules. Schedule 1 is mandatory. Schedules 2, 3, and 4 are optional. For each policy schedule that you add, do the following:
1. In the Schedule details section do the following:
  1. For Schedule name, specify a descriptive name for the schedule.
  2. For Frequency and the related fields, configure the interval between policy runs.
    
    You can configure policy runs on a daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly schedule. Alternatively, choose Custom cron expression to specify an interval of up to one year. For more information, see Cron expressions in the Amazon CloudWatch Events User Guide.
    
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  3. For Starting at, specify the time to start the policy runs. The first policy run starts within an hour after the time that you schedule. You must enter the time in the hh:mm UTC format.
  4. For Retention type, specify the retention policy for AMIs created by the schedule.
    
    You can retain AMIs based on either their total count or their age.
    
    For count-based retention, the range is 1 to 1000. After the maximum count is reached, the oldest AMI is deregistered when a new one is created.
    
    For age-based retention, the range is 1 day to 100 years. After the retention period of each AMI expires, it is deregistered.
    
    Note
    All schedules must have the same retention type. You can specify the retention type for Schedule 1 only. Schedules 2, 3, and 4 inherit the retention type from Schedule 1. Each schedule can have its own retention count or period.
    
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2. Configure tagging for AMIs.
  
  In the Tagging section, do the following:
  1. To copy all of the user-defined tags from the source instance to the AMIs created by the schedule, select Copy tags from source.
  2. By default, AMIs created by the schedule are automatically tagged with the ID of the source instance. To prevent this automatic tagging from happening, for Variable tags, remove the instance-id:$(instance-id) tile.
  3. To specify additional tags to assign to AMIs created by this schedule, choose Add tags.
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3. Configure AMI deprecation.
  
  To deprecate AMIs when they should no longer be used, in the AMI deprecation section, select Enable AMI deprecation for this schedule and then specify the AMI deprecation rule. The AMI deprecation rule specifies when AMIs are to be deprecated.
  
  If the schedule uses count-based AMI retention, you must specify the number of oldest AMIs to deprecate. The deprecation count must be less than or equal to the schedule's AMI retention count, and it can't be greater than 1000. For example, if the schedule is configured to retain a maximum of 5 AMIs, then you can configure the scheduled to deprecate up to old 5 oldest AMIs.
  
  If the schedule uses age-based AMI retention, you must specify the period after which AMIs are to be deprecated. The deprecation count must be less than or equal to the schedule's AMI retention period, and it can't be greater than 10 years (120 months, 520 weeks, or 3650 days). For example, if the schedule is configured to retain AMIs for 10 days, then you can configure the scheduled to deprecate AMIs after periods up to 10 days after creation.
  
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4. Configure cross-Region copying.
  
  To copy AMIs created by the schedule to different Regions, in the Cross-Region copy section, select Enable cross-Region copy. You can copy AMIs to up to three additional Regions in your account. You must specify a separate cross-Region copy rule for each destination Region.
  
  For each destination Region, you can specify the following:
  A retention policy for the AMI copy. When the retention period expires, the copy in the destination Region is automatically deregistered.
  
  Encryption status for the AMI copy. If the source AMI is encrypted, or if encryption by default is enabled, the copied AMIs are always encrypted. If the source AMI is unencrypted and encryption by default is disabled, you can optionally enable encryption. If you do not specify a KMS key, the AMIs are encrypted using the default KMS key for EBS encryption in each destination Region. If you specify a KMS key for the destination Region, then the selected IAM role must have access to the KMS key.
  
  A deprecation rule for the AMI copy. When the deprecation period expires, the AMI copy is automatically deprecated. The deprecation period must be less than or equal to the copy retention period, and it can't be greater than 10 years.
  
  Whether to copy all tags or no tags from the source AMI.
  Note
  Do not exceed the number of concurrent AMI copies per Region.
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5. To add additional schedules, choose Add another schedule, which is located at the top of the screen. For each additional schedule, complete the fields as described previously in this topic.
6. After you have added the required schedules, choose Review policy.
Review the policy summary, and then choose Create policy.

Note
If you get the Role with name AWSDataLifecycleManagerDefaultRoleForAMIManagement already exists error, see Troubleshooting for more information.

Command line

Use the create-lifecycle-policy command to create an AMI lifecycle policy. For PolicyType, specify IMAGE_MANAGEMENT.

Note

To simplify the syntax, the following examples use a JSON file, policyDetails.json, that includes the policy details.

Example 1: Age-based retention and AMI deprecation

This example creates an AMI lifecycle policy that creates AMIs of all instances that have a tag key of purpose with a value of production without rebooting the targeted instances. The policy includes one schedule that creates an AMI every day at 01:00 UTC. The policy retains AMIs for 2 days and deprecates them after 1 day. It also copies the tags from the source instance to the AMIs that it creates.


aws dlm create-lifecycle-policy \
    --description "My AMI policy" \
    --state ENABLED \
    --execution-role-arn arn:aws-cn:iam::12345678910:role/AWSDataLifecycleManagerDefaultRoleForAMIManagement \
    --policy-details file://policyDetails.json

The following is an example of the policyDetails.json file.


{
    "PolicyType": "IMAGE_MANAGEMENT",
    "ResourceTypes": [
        "INSTANCE"
    ],
    "TargetTags": [{
        "Key": "purpose",
        "Value": "production"
    }],
    "Schedules": [{
            "Name": "DailyAMIs",
            "TagsToAdd": [{
                "Key": "type",
                "Value": "myDailyAMI"
            }],
            "CreateRule": {
                "Interval": 24,
                "IntervalUnit": "HOURS",
                "Times": [
                    "01:00"
                ]
            },
            RetainRule":{
                "Interval" : 2,
                "IntervalUnit" : "DAYS"
            },
            DeprecateRule": {
                "Interval" : 1,
                "IntervalUnit" : "DAYS"
            },
            "CopyTags": true
        }
    ],
    "Parameters" : {
        "NoReboot":true
    }
}

If the request succeeds, the command returns the ID of the newly created policy. The following is example output.


{
   "PolicyId": "policy-9876543210abcdef0"
}

Example 2: Count-based retention and AMI deprecation with cross-Region copy

This example creates an AMI lifecycle policy that creates AMIs of all instances that have a tag key of purpose with a value of production and reboots the target instances. The policy includes one schedule that creates an AMI every 6 hours starting at 17:30 UTC. The policy retains 3 AMIs and automatically deprecates the 2 oldest AMIs. It also has a cross-Region copy rule that copies AMIs to us-east-1, retains 2 AMI copies, and automatically deprecates the oldest AMI.


aws dlm create-lifecycle-policy \
    --description "My AMI policy" \
    --state ENABLED \
    --execution-role-arn arn:aws-cn:iam::12345678910:role/AWSDataLifecycleManagerDefaultRoleForAMIManagement \
    --policy-details file://policyDetails.json

The following is an example of the policyDetails.json file.


{
    "PolicyType": "IMAGE_MANAGEMENT",
    "ResourceTypes" : [
        "INSTANCE"
    ],
    "TargetTags": [{
        "Key":"purpose", 
        "Value":"production"
    }],
    "Parameters" : {
          "NoReboot": true
    },
    "Schedules" : [{
        "Name" : "Schedule1",
        "CopyTags": true,
        "CreateRule" : {
            "Interval": 6,
            "IntervalUnit": "HOURS",
            "Times" : ["17:30"]
        },
        "RetainRule":{
            "Count" : 3
        },
        "DeprecateRule":{
            "Count" : 2
        },
        "CrossRegionCopyRules": [{
            "TargetRegion": "us-east-1",
            "Encrypted": true,
            "RetainRule":{
                "IntervalUnit": "DAYS",
                "Interval": 2
            },
            "DeprecateRule":{
                "IntervalUnit": "DAYS",
                "Interval": 1
            },
            "CopyTags": true
        }]
    }]
}

Considerations for AMI lifecycle policies

The following general considerations apply to creating AMI lifecycle policies:

AMI lifecycle policies target only instances that are in the same Region as the policy.
The first AMI creation operation starts within one hour after the specified start time. Subsequent AMI creation operations start within one hour of their scheduled time.
When Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager deregisters an AMI, it automatically deletes it backing snapshots.
Target resource tags are case sensitive.
If you remove the target tags from an instance that is targeted by a policy, Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager no longer manages existing AMIs in the standard; you must manually delete them if they are no longer needed.
You can create multiple policies to back up an instance. For example, if an instance has two tags, where tag A is the target for policy A to create an AMI every 12 hours,and tag B is the target for policy B to create an AMI every 24 hours, Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager creates AMIs according to the schedules for both policies. Alternatively, you can achieve the same result by creating a single policy that has multiple schedules. For example, you can create a single policy that targets only tag A, and specify two schedules — one for every 12 hours and one for every 24 hours.
New volumes that are attached to a target instance after the policy has been created are automatically included in the backup at the next policy run. All volumes attached to the instance at the time of the policy run are included.
If you create a policy with a custom cron-based schedule that is configured to create only one AMI, the policy will not automatically deregister that AMI when the retention threshold is reached. You must manually deregister the AMI if it is no longer needed.
If you create an age-based policy where the retention period is shorter than the creation frequency, Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager will always retain the last AMI until the next one is created. For example, if an age-based policy creates one AMI every month with a retention period of seven days, Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager will retain each AMI for one month, even though the retention period is seven days.
For count-based policies, Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager always creates AMIs according to the creation frequency before attempting to deregister the oldest AMI according to the retention policy.
It can take several hours to successfully deregister an AMI and to delete its associated backing snapshots. If Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager creates the next AMI before the previously created AMI is successfully deregistered, you could temporarily retain a number of AMIs that is greater than your retention count.

The following considerations apply to terminating instances targeted by a policy:

If you terminate an instance that was targeted by a policy with a count-based retention schedule, the policy no longer manages the AMIs that it previously created from the terminated instance. You must manually deregister those earlier AMIs if they are no longer needed.
If you terminate an instance that was targeted by a policy with an age-based retention schedule, the policy continues to deregister AMIs that were previously created from the terminated instance on the defined schedule, up to, but not including, the last AMI. You must manually deregister the last AMI if it is no longer needed.

The following considerations apply to AMI policies and AMI deprecation:

If you increase the AMI deprecation count for a schedule with count-based retention, the change is applied to all AMIs (existing and new) created by the schedule.
If you increase the AMI deprecation period for a schedule with age-based retention, the change is applied to new AMIs only. Existing AMIs are not affected.
If you remove the AMI deprecation rule from a schedule, Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager will not cancel deprecation for AMIs that were previously deprecated by that schedule.
If you decrease the AMI deprecation count or period for a schedule, Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager will not cancel deprecation for AMIs that were previously deprecated by that schedule.
If you manually deprecate an AMI that was created by an AMI policy, Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager will not override the deprecation.
If you manually cancel deprecation for an AMI that was previously deprecated by an AMI policy, Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager will not override the cancellation.
If an AMI is created by multiple conflicting schedules, and one or more of those schedules do not have an AMI deprecation rule, Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager will not deprecate that AMI.
If an AMI is created by multiple conflicting schedules, and all of those schedules have an AMI deprecation rule, Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager will use the deprecation rule that results in the latest deprecation date.

The following considerations apply to AMI policies and Recycle Bin:

If Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager deregisters an AMI and sends it to the Recycle Bin when the policy's retention threshold is reached, and you manually restore that AMI from the Recycle Bin, you must manually deregister the AMI when it is no longer needed. Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager will no longer manage the AMI.
If you manually deregister an AMI that was created by a policy, and that AMI is in the Recycle Bin when the policy’s retention threshold is reached, Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager will not deregister the AMI. Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager does not manage AMIs while they are in the Recycle Bin.

If the AMI is restored from the Recycle Bin before the policy's retention threshold is reached, Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager will deregister the AMI when the policy's retention threshold is reached.

If the AMI is restored from the Recycle Bin after the policy's retention threshold is reached, Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager will no longer deregister the AMI. You must manually delete it when it is no longer needed.

The following considerations apply to AMI policies that are in the error state:

For policies with age-based retention schedules, AMIs that are set to expire while the policy is in the error state are retained indefinitely. You must deregister the AMIs manually. When you re-enable the policy, Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager resumes deregistering AMIs as their retention periods expire.
For policies with count-based retention schedules, the policy stops creating and deregistering AMIs while it is in the error state. When you re-enable the policy, Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager resumes creating AMIs, and it resumes deregistering AMIs as the retention threshold is met.

The following considerations apply to AMI policies and disabling AMIs

If you disable an AMI created by Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager, and that AMI is disabled when its retention threshold is reached, Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager will deregister the AMI and delete its associated snapshots.
If you disable an AMI created by Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager and you manually archive its associated snapshots, and those snapshots are archived when their retention threshold is met, Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager will not delete those snapshots and it will no longer manage them.

Additional resources

For more information, see the Automating Amazon EBS snapshot and AMI management using Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager Amazon storage blog.

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