Recover AMIs from the Recycle Bin - Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud
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Recover AMIs from the Recycle Bin

Recycle Bin is a data recovery feature that enables you to restore accidentally deleted Amazon EBS snapshots and EBS-backed AMIs. When using Recycle Bin, if your resources are deleted, they are retained in the Recycle Bin for a time period that you specify before being permanently deleted.

You can restore a resource from the Recycle Bin at any time before its retention period expires. After you restore a resource from the Recycle Bin, the resource is removed from the Recycle Bin and you can use it in the same way that you use any other resource of that type in your account. If the retention period expires and the resource is not restored, the resource is permanently deleted from the Recycle Bin and it is no longer available for recovery.

AMIs in the Recycle Bin do not incur any additional charges.

For more information, see Recycle Bin.

Permissions for working with AMIs in the Recycle Bin

By default, users don't have permission to work with AMIs that are in the Recycle Bin. To allow users to work with these resources, you must create IAM policies that grant permission to use specific resources and API actions. Once the policies are created, you must add permissions to your users, groups, or roles.

To view and recover AMIs that are in the Recycle Bin, users must have the following permissions:

  • ec2:ListImagesInRecycleBin

  • ec2:RestoreImageFromRecycleBin

To manage tags for AMIs in the Recycle Bin, users need the following additional permissions.

  • ec2:CreateTags

  • ec2:DeleteTags

To use the Recycle Bin console, users need the ec2:DescribeTags permission.

The following is an example IAM policy. It includes the ec2:DescribeTags permission for console users, and it includes the ec2:CreateTags and ec2:DeleteTags permissions for managing tags. If the permissions are not needed, you can remove them from the policy.

{ "Version": "2012-10-17", "Statement": [ { "Effect": "Allow", "Action": [ "ec2:ListImagesInRecycleBin", "ec2:RestoreImageFromRecycleBin" ], "Resource": "*" }, { "Effect": "Allow", "Action": [ "ec2:CreateTags", "ec2:DeleteTags", "ec2:DescribeTags" ], "Resource": "arn:aws:ec2:Region::image/*" } ] }

To provide access, add permissions to your users, groups, or roles:

For more information about the permissions needed to use Recycle Bin, see Permissions for working with Recycle Bin and retention rules.

View AMIs in the Recycle Bin

While an AMI is in the Recycle Bin, you can view limited information about it, including:

  • The name, description, and unique ID of the AMI.

  • The date and time when the AMI was deleted and it entered Recycle Bin.

  • The date and time when the retention period expires. The AMI will be permanently deleted at this time.

You can view the AMIs in the Recycle Bin using one of the following methods.

Recycle Bin console
To view deleted AMIs in the Recycle Bin using the console
  1. Open the Recycle Bin console at console.amazonaws.cn/rbin/home/.

  2. In the navigation pane, choose Recycle Bin.

  3. The grid lists all of the resources that are currently in the Recycle Bin. To view the details for a specific AMI, select it in the grid, and choose Actions, View details.

Amazon CLI
To view deleted AMIs in the Recycle Bin using the Amazon CLI

Use the list-images-in-recycle-bin Amazon CLI command. To view specific AMIs, include the --image-id option and specify the IDs of the AMIs to view. You can specify up to 20 IDs in a single request.

To view all of the AMIs in the Recycle Bin, omit the --image-id option. If you do not specify a value for --max-items, the command returns 1,000 items per page, by default. For more information, see Pagination in the Amazon EC2 API Reference.

$ aws ec2 list-images-in-recycle-bin --image-id ami_id

For example, the following command provides information about AMI ami-01234567890abcdef in the Recycle Bin.

$ aws ec2 list-images-in-recycle-bin --image-id ami-01234567890abcdef

Example output:

{ "Images": [ { "ImageId": "ami-0f740206c743d75df", "Name": "My AL2 AMI", "Description": "My Amazon Linux 2 AMI", "RecycleBinEnterTime": "2021-11-26T21:04:50+00:00", "RecycleBinExitTime": "2022-03-06T21:04:50+00:00" } ] }
Important

If you receive the following error, you might need to update your Amazon CLI version. For more information, see Command not found errors .

aws.exe: error: argument operation: Invalid choice, valid choices are: ...

Restore AMIs from the Recycle Bin

You can't use an AMI in any way while it is in the Recycle Bin. To use the AMI, you must first restore it. When you restore an AMI from the Recycle Bin, the AMI is immediately available for use, and it is removed from the Recycle Bin. You can use a restored AMI in the same way that you use any other AMI in your account.

You can restore an AMI from the Recycle Bin using one of the following methods.

Recycle Bin console
To restore an AMI from the Recycle Bin using the console
  1. Open the Recycle Bin console at console.amazonaws.cn/rbin/home/.

  2. In the navigation pane, choose Recycle Bin.

  3. The grid lists all of the resources that are currently in the Recycle Bin. Select the AMI to restore, and choose Recover.

  4. When prompted, choose Recover.

Amazon CLI
To restore a deleted AMI from the Recycle Bin using the Amazon CLI

Use the restore-image-from-recycle-bin Amazon CLI command. For --image-id, specify the ID of the AMI to restore.

$ aws ec2 restore-image-from-recycle-bin --image-id ami_id

For example, the following command restores AMI ami-01234567890abcdef from the Recycle Bin.

$ aws ec2 restore-image-from-recycle-bin --image-id ami-01234567890abcdef

The command returns no output on success.

Important

If you receive the following error, you might need to update your Amazon CLI version. For more information, see Command not found errors .

aws.exe: error: argument operation: Invalid choice, valid choices are: ...