Limitations for resources being imported with VM Import/Export - VM Import/Export
General limitations for your resourcesLimitations for Linux/Unix resourcesLimitations for Windows resources
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Limitations for resources being imported with VM Import/Export

Review the following limitations that apply when you import a VM into Amazon EC2.

General limitations for your resources

The following limitations apply to any operating system that you can import.

  • VMs that are created as the result of a physical-to-virtual (P2V) conversion are not supported. A P2V conversion occurs when a disk image is created by performing a Linux or Windows installation process on a physical machine and then importing a copy of that Linux or Windows installation to a VM.

  • Importing VMs with dual-boot configurations isn't supported.

  • Importing VMs with encrypted volumes isn't supported.

  • VM Import/Export doesn't support VMs that use Raw Device Mapping (RDM). Only VMDK disk images are supported.

  • VM Import/Export doesn't support VMware SEsparse delta-file format.

  • If you import a VM that's compatible with UEFI using the import-image command while specifying an EBS snapshot, you must specify a value for the platform parameter. For more information, see import-snapshot in the Amazon EC2 API Reference.

  • An imported VM may fail to boot if the root partition is not on the same virtual hard drive as the MBR.

  • A VM import task fails for VMs with more than 21 volumes attached. Additional disks can be individually imported using the ImportSnapshot API.

  • VM Import/Export assigns only private IPv4 addresses to your instances, regardless of the auto-assign public IP setting for the subnet. To use a public IPv4 address, you can allocate an Elastic IP address to your account and associate it with your instance. You can also add IPv6 addresses. For more information, see IP addressing for your VPCs and subnets in the Amazon Virtual Private Cloud User Guide.

  • Multiple network interfaces are not currently supported. After import, your VM has a single virtual network interface that uses DHCP to assign addresses.

  • Disk images must be less than 16 TiB. For disk images that are larger than 8 TiB, you must use a manifest file.

    • You can use the ImportInstance operation to import VMs with disks up to the maximum supported size.

    • You can use the ImportImage operation to import VMs with disks less than 8 TiB in size.

Limitations for Linux/Unix resources

The following limitations apply to Linux operating systems that you can import.

  • Imported Linux VMs must use 64-bit images. Migrating 32-bit Linux images isn't supported.

  • Imported Linux VMs should use default kernels for best results. VMs that use custom Linux kernels might not migrate successfully.

  • When preparing Linux VMs for import, make sure that there is sufficient disk space available on the root volume for installing drivers and other software.

  • To help ensure your Linux VM can import successfully and run on Amazon EC2 using the Amazon Nitro System, you can install the Amazon NVMe and Amazon Elastic Network Adapter (ENA) drivers before exporting your VM from its virtualization environment. For more information, see Amazon EBS and NVMe on Linux instances and Enable enhanced networking with the Elastic Network Adapter (ENA) on Linux instances in the Amazon EC2 User Guide.

  • If you import a Linux VM compatible with UEFI, you must have a fallback EFI binary, BOOTX64.EFI, located on the EFI System Partition.

  • Predictable network interface names are not supported for virtual machine imports.

Limitations for Windows resources

The following limitations apply to Windows operating systems that you can import.

  • When preparing Windows VMs for import, make sure that there is sufficient disk space available on the root volume for installing drivers and other software. For Microsoft Windows VMs, configure a fixed page file size and ensure that there is at least 6 GiB of free space available on the root volume. If Windows is configured to use the "Automatically manage paging file size for all drives" setting, it might create 16 GB pagefile.sys files on the C drive of the instance.

  • If you import a Windows VM compatible with UEFI, we convert GPT boot volumes to MBR if the following are true: the image format is VHDX, the uncompressed size is 2 TiB or smaller, there are no more than three primary partitions, and the volume is not a dynamic disk.

  • If you import a Windows Server 2012 R2 VM, VM Import/Export installs the single root I/O virtualization (SR-IOV) drivers. These drivers are not required unless you plan to use enhanced networking, which provides higher performance (packets per second), lower latency, and lower jitter.

  • VM Import/Export does not support Emergency Management Services (EMS). If EMS is enabled for a source Windows VM, we disable it in the imported image.

  • Windows language packs that use UTF-16 (or non-ASCII) characters are not supported for import. We recommend using the English language pack when importing Windows VMs.

  • Windows Server VMs with the Hyper-V server role installed are not supported.