Use CreateInstanceExportTask with an Amazon SDK or CLI

To export an instance

This example command creates a task to export the instance i-1234567890abcdef0 to the Amazon S3 bucket myexportbucket.

Command:

aws ec2 create-instance-export-task --description "RHEL5 instance" --instance-id i-1234567890abcdef0 --target-environment vmware --export-to-s3-task DiskImageFormat=vmdk,ContainerFormat=ova,S3Bucket=myexportbucket,S3Prefix=RHEL5

Output:

{
    "ExportTask": {
        "State": "active",
        "InstanceExportDetails": {
            "InstanceId": "i-1234567890abcdef0",
            "TargetEnvironment": "vmware"
        },
        "ExportToS3Task": {
            "S3Bucket": "myexportbucket",
            "S3Key": "RHEL5export-i-fh8sjjsq.ova",
            "DiskImageFormat": "vmdk",
            "ContainerFormat": "ova"
        },
        "Description": "RHEL5 instance",
        "ExportTaskId": "export-i-fh8sjjsq"
    }
}

Example 1: This example exports a stopped instance, i-0800b00a00EXAMPLE, as a virtual hard disk (VHD) to the S3 bucket testbucket-export-instances-2019. The target environment is Microsoft, and the region parameter is added because the instance is in the us-east-1 region, while the user's default Amazon Region is not us-east-1. To get the status of the export task, copy the ExportTaskId value from the results of this command, then run Get-EC2ExportTask -ExportTaskId export_task_ID_from_results.

New-EC2InstanceExportTask -InstanceId i-0800b00a00EXAMPLE -ExportToS3Task_DiskImageFormat VHD -ExportToS3Task_S3Bucket "testbucket-export-instances-2019" -TargetEnvironment Microsoft -Region us-east-1

Output:

Description           : 
ExportTaskId          : export-i-077c73108aEXAMPLE
ExportToS3Task        : Amazon.EC2.Model.ExportToS3Task
InstanceExportDetails : Amazon.EC2.Model.InstanceExportDetails
State                 : active
StatusMessage         :