Amazon ECS-optimized Windows AMIs - Amazon Elastic Container Service
Amazon ECS-optimized AMI variants
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Amazon ECS-optimized Windows AMIs

The Amazon ECS-optimized AMIs are preconfigured with the necessary components that you need to run Amazon ECS workloads. Although you can create your own container instance AMI that meets the basic specifications needed to run your containerized workloads on Amazon ECS, the Amazon ECS-optimized AMIs are preconfigured and tested on Amazon ECS by Amazon engineers. It is the simplest way for you to get started and to get your containers running on Amazon quickly.

The Amazon ECS-optimized AMI metadata, including the AMI name, Amazon ECS container agent version, and Amazon ECS runtime version which includes the Docker version, for each variant can be retrieved programmatically. For more information, see Retrieving Amazon ECS-optimized Windows AMI metadata.

You can subscribe to the Windows AMI Amazon SNS topics to be notified when a new AMI is released or an AMI version is marked private. For more information, see Subscribing to Amazon ECS-optimized Windows AMI update notifications.

Important

All ECS-optimized AMI variants produced after August will be migrating from Docker EE (Mirantis) to Docker CE (Moby project).

To ensure that customers have the latest security updates by default, Amazon ECS maintains at least the last three Windows Amazon ECS-optimized AMIs. After releasing new Windows Amazon ECS-optimized AMIs, Amazon ECS makes the Windows Amazon ECS-optimized AMIs that are older private. If there is a private AMI that you need access to, let us know by filing a ticket with Cloud Support.

Amazon ECS-optimized AMI variants

The following Windows Server variants of the Amazon ECS-optimized AMI are available for your Amazon EC2 instances.

Important

All ECS-optimized AMI variants produced after August will be migrating from Docker EE (Mirantis) to Docker CE (Moby project).

  • Amazon ECS-optimized Windows Server 2022 Full AMI

  • Amazon ECS-optimized Windows Server 2022 Core AMI

  • Amazon ECS-optimized Windows Server 2019 Full AMI

  • Amazon ECS-optimized Windows Server 2019 Core AMI

  • Amazon ECS-optimized Windows Server 2016 Full AMI

Important

Windows Server 2016 does not support the latest Docker version, for example 25.x.x. Therefore the Windows Server 2016 Full AMIs will not receive security or bug patches to the Docker runtime. We recommend that you move to one of the following Windows platforms:

  • Windows Server 2022 Full

  • Windows Server 2022 Core

  • Windows Server 2019 Full

  • Windows Server 2019 Core

On August 9, 2022, the Amazon ECS-optimized Windows Server 20H2 Core AMI reached its end of support date. No new versions of this AMI will be released. For more information, see Windows Server release information.

Windows Server 2022, Windows Server 2019, and Windows Server 2016 are Long-Term Servicing Channel (LTSC) releases. Windows Server 20H2 is a Semi-Annual Channel (SAC) release. For more information, see Windows Server release information.

Considerations

Here are some things you should know about Amazon EC2 Windows containers and Amazon ECS.

  • Windows containers can't run on Linux container instances, and the opposite is also the case. For better task placement for Windows and Linux tasks, keep Windows and Linux container instances in separate clusters and only place Windows tasks on Windows clusters. You can ensure that Windows task definitions are only placed on Windows instances by setting the following placement constraint: memberOf(ecs.os-type=='windows').

  • Windows containers are supported for tasks that use the EC2 and Fargate launch types.

  • Windows containers and container instances can't support all the task definition parameters that are available for Linux containers and container instances. For some parameters, they aren't supported at all, and others behave differently on Windows than they do on Linux. For more information, see Amazon ECS task definition differences for EC2 instances running Windows.

  • For the IAM roles for tasks feature, you need to configure your Windows container instances to allow the feature at launch. Your containers must run some provided PowerShell code when they use the feature. For more information, see Amazon EC2 Windows instance additional configuration.

  • The IAM roles for tasks feature uses a credential proxy to provide credentials to the containers. This credential proxy occupies port 80 on the container instance, so if you use IAM roles for tasks, port 80 is not available for tasks. For web service containers, you can use an Application Load Balancer and dynamic port mapping to provide standard HTTP port 80 connections to your containers. For more information, see Use load balancing to distribute Amazon ECS service traffic.

  • The Windows Server Docker images are large (9 GiB). So, your Windows container instances require more storage space than Linux container instances.

  • To run a Windows container on a Windows Server, the container’s base image OS version must match that of the host. For more information, see Windows container version compatibility on the Microsoft documentation website. If your cluster runs multiple Windows versions, you can ensure that a task is placed on an EC2 instance running on the same version by using the placement constraint: memberOf(attribute:ecs.os-family == WINDOWS_SERVER_<OS_Release>_<FULL or CORE>). For more information, see Retrieving Amazon ECS-optimized Windows AMI metadata.