Use CreateImage with an Amazon SDK or CLI

Example 1: To create an AMI from an Amazon EBS-backed instance

The following create-image example creates an AMI from the specified instance.

aws ec2 create-image \
    --instance-id i-1234567890abcdef0 \
    --name "My server" \
    --description "An AMI for my server"

Output:

{
    "ImageId": "ami-abcdef01234567890"
}

For more information about specifying a block device mapping for your AMI, see Specifying a block device mapping for an AMI in the Amazon EC2 User Guide.

Example 2: To create an AMI from an Amazon EBS-backed instance without reboot

The following create-image example creates an AMI and sets the --no-reboot parameter, so that the instance is not rebooted before the image is created.

aws ec2 create-image \
    --instance-id i-1234567890abcdef0 \
    --name "My server" \
    --no-reboot

Output:

{
    "ImageId": "ami-abcdef01234567890"
}

For more information about specifying a block device mapping for your AMI, see Specifying a block device mapping for an AMI in the Amazon EC2 User Guide.

Example 3: To tag an AMI and snapshots on creation

The following create-image example creates an AMI, and tags the AMI and the snapshots with the same tag cost-center=cc123

aws ec2 create-image \
    --instance-id i-1234567890abcdef0 \
    --name "My server" \
    --tag-specifications "ResourceType=image,Tags=[{Key=cost-center,Value=cc123}]" "ResourceType=snapshot,Tags=[{Key=cost-center,Value=cc123}]"

Output:

{
    "ImageId": "ami-abcdef01234567890"
}

For more information about tagging your resources on creation, see Add tags on resource creation in the Amazon EC2 User Guide.

Example 1: This example creates an AMI with the specified name and description, from the specified instance. Amazon EC2 attempts to cleanly shut down the instance before creating the image, and restarts the instance on completion.

New-EC2Image -InstanceId i-12345678 -Name "my-web-server" -Description "My web server AMI"

Example 2: This example creates an AMI with the specified name and description, from the specified instance. Amazon EC2 creates the image without shutting down and restarting the instance; therefore, file system integrity on the created image can't be guaranteed.

New-EC2Image -InstanceId i-12345678 -Name "my-web-server" -Description "My web server AMI" -NoReboot $true

Example 3: This example creates an AMI with three volumes. The first volume is based on an Amazon EBS snapshot. The second volume is an empty 100 GiB Amazon EBS volume. The third volume is an instance store volume. The syntax used by this example requires PowerShell version 3 or higher.

$ebsBlock1 = @{SnapshotId="snap-1a2b3c4d"}
$ebsBlock2 = @{VolumeSize=100}

New-EC2Image -InstanceId i-12345678 -Name "my-web-server" -Description "My web server AMI" -BlockDeviceMapping @( @{DeviceName="/dev/sdf";Ebs=$ebsBlock1}, @{DeviceName="/dev/sdg";Ebs=$ebsBlock2}, @{DeviceName="/dev/sdc";VirtualName="ephemeral0"})