Amazon, which does not need an introduction, is a multinational e-commerce company, providing almost all the products and services through its medium. Be it groceries, music, movies, electronics, or cloud computing services. Amazon provides it all. Let’s know What is Amazon AMI?
Bringing our attention to specifically the cloud computing services that Amazon provides us, AWS (Amazon Web Services) has a lot to offer to its customers. Amazon Web Services enable you to build applications and create databases, deliver the content of your choice and enjoy all the technological benefits such as serverless computing, Machine learning, data analytics, data lakes, Internet of things (IoT), etc with remarkable security and speed.
Amazon Machine Images (AMI) is a package required to launch an instance. To better understand what AMI is, one must know what an “instance” is. Under cloud computing, Instance means the server which is being used to run your application. It is a virtual machine that is used to run the application or service (commonly called workload) that is deployed by the customer. So in cloud computing, Instance is preferred over calling the machine a server. Now that we know a few terms of cloud computing, let us dig deeper to know and understand what Amazon Machine Images is, but before that, we also need to understand what EC2 (Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud) is.
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud allows you to run applications on a public cloud which can be adjusted in their size according to the usage and the requirement for a specific application. It saves you from investing in the hardware for running applications. EC2 provides you with many features, for example, the configurations required for your instances, security for your instances, storage, networking, a prepackaged guide for your instances (AMI), etc.
What are Amazon Machine Images (AMI)?
As explained earlier, AMI is predesigned templates that you may use to run your applications. You may use one single template for different applications if you need them to have the same layout or use different templates for different applications as per your choice and requirement.
The components of AMI are as follows:
- One or more backups for AMIs called snapshots, that are phased backups that save time and facilitate storing data by not replicating the information but contain all the data.
- Control of the launch instances through launch permissions to manage the functioning between the AWS accounts and the AMI.
- A block device (storage device) mapping to define the volume and create an AMI while launching one.
You may set up the templates available through AMI according to your choices, preferences, and requirements and as a result, create a new AMI template.
Categories of Amazon Machine Image
There are three main categories of Amazon Machine Image, they are as follows:
- Community AMIs: Community AMIs are free to use and it is just the operating system that you select with them. It provides basic software packages and settings
- AWS Marketplace AMIs: This is not a free service, it comes along with a package of licensed software. Various Marketplace AMIs come with various enterprise-type software
- My AMIs: This is the category you own. The AMIs built by you come under this category.
AMI Boot Mode Parameter
There is two boot mode software used in EC2, UEFI and legacy BIOS. Initially, Legacy BIOS is run on AMD and Intel instance types. To switch it to UEFI, a boot mode parameter set to UEFI must be selected for the AMI. Also, keep in mind the operating system being used in the AMI must be set up to support UEFI else it will not function.
AMI Boot Mode Parameter controls and selects the boot mode during the launch of an instance.
AMI Boot Mode Parameter is discretionary. If an instance does not have it then they use the default instance type, that is, UEFI for instances supported by Gravitation and Legacy BIOS for instances supported by Intel and AMD
Windows AMIs by Amazon Web Services
AWS lets you have various sets of AMIs that are publicly available containing setups specified for Windows. AMI facilitates you to create and deploy your applications on EC2 with much ease. Select the AMI template that best suits and fulfills the requirements of your application and launch it. And just like any other Windows server, you will receive the credentials to login into the administrator account with the help of Remote Desktop Connection.
Windows AMI also facilitates you to run an instance as a database server with the help of Microsoft SQL Server.
Creating an Amazon Machine Image
Creating an AMI through EC2 is not a difficult task. Following are the steps to create one:
- Click on the Services Drop-down menu and then click on EC2 under the Compute section.
- A window appears. Click on the Launch Instance button.
- Select the server as per your requirements. There are various instances available for you to choose from, you may filter accordingly and then choose the instance.
- Configure the instance details such as the number of instances, network, subnet, public IP, tenancy, etc.
- Now the next step is to add storage. By default the storage is 30GB. You may increase it as per your need, but not more than 2048 GB. Some instances may have a limit to 1023 GB so they will not offer more than 1023 GB of storage. You can have the storage for free if you are using 30GB of storage, if you need more than that, additional charges have to be paid to avail the same. You may also select the volume type as per your choice (for example, general-purpose SSD, Provisions IOPS SSD, Magnetic, etc).
You can encrypt the root volume as well which is by default, set to not encrypted.
- Adding of Tags: This is an optional step. You may give tags of your choice or not at all. Do keep in mind that tags cannot be copied from one server to another.
- The next step is the configuration of the security group. Here you may name the Security Group, select the type and its range, source, etc.
- Review and Launch the Amazon Machine Image. You need to create a key pair to launch the instance.
Once the server is done with the checkups, it is ready to use.
Now to retrieve its RDP,
- Click on Connect.
- A window appears, click on Download Remote Desktop File.
- Click on Get Password in the same window.
- This opens another window that has the Key Name and requires you to input the key pair path that you just downloaded.
- Upload the required file and then click on Decrypt Password. Do mind copying and save the decrypted password somewhere on your desktop as you will not be able to decrypt it again. You will be needing it to access the recreated copy in the future.
- Now open the RDP file that was downloaded and click on Connect.
- Enter the password and then click on OK.
- A window appears to confirm the connection of your computer with the server. Click on Yes.
- Now you have entered your running server.
Working of Snapshots.
As told earlier, Snapshots are phased backups that backup from the last point of work you had not saved. This saves the storage capacity and makes the process quicker. Just like the games that contain checkpoints.
- The first step is to create two Instances. (Follow the steps explained above)
- Login into the first instance. A window will appear showing the details of the instance.
- Now, create a new Volume and then attach it to the first server. You may choose to encrypt the volume if you want to.
- Add tag and its value. And then click on Create Volume.
- Your new Volume has been created.
- Now click on the Actions Drop Down icon and select the Attach Volume Option.
- Specify the instance and the device in the dialogue box that appears.
- Mount the Volume by creating a special file system for the same. Therefore create a directory and mount the second volume there.
- Now unmount the same in order to detach the volume.
- Now the device is attached but is unmounted.
- Create a new snapshot.
Once you create a new snapshot, you can delete the volume you created as it is now saved inside your snapshot.
Conclusion
Let us recollect what we have learned. Amazon Web Services is a subdivision of Amazon that provides various cloud computing services for you to save your money and time rather than investing in hardware and setup. Anything to be done through cloud computing requires servers to function. Servers are preferably called Instances in the world of cloud computing. Amazon Machine Image (AMI) is the already set up template as a server for you to use for your purpose. You may edit and create your own AMI as per your choice.
There are three categories of AMI, one with a basic setting and is free, another with paid services, and the ones that the user creates for himself/herself.
Keep in mind the boot mode parameters while initializing the AMIs according to the processor of your machine. In case you wish to alter the boot mode parameter, do consider if the operating system of your machine supports the other boot mode parameter you wish to use, otherwise the operation would fail.
The creation of AMIs and Snapshots is as easy as anything. Just follow the guidelines without any fail.