How to copy Windows EC2 instances to S3 bucket in AWS?

Question

I am not able to find a find documents showing how can I copy a Windows instance to an Amazon S3 bucket.

Can any one help me with step by step approach to do this and suggest some of the links?

Answer 1

You can not copy AMIs to s3. You can either create a snapshot of your volumes or create another image (AMI).

I assume you're trying to create a backup of your AMIs. So, there are some alternatives for doing that.

• Create a new AMI from an existing running image. Reference: Creating an Amazon EBS-Backed Windows AMI

Creating a Windows AMI from a Running Instance

You can create an AMI using the AWS Management Console or the command line. The following diagram summarizes the process for creating an Amazon EBS-backed AMI from a running EC2 instance. Start with an existing AMI, launch an instance, customize it, create a new AMI from it, and finally launch an instance of your new AMI. The steps in the following diagram match the steps in the procedure below. If you already have a running Amazon EBS-backed instance, you can go directly to step 4.

You can create images using the AWS CLI command create-image

---

• Create Snapshots of your volumes, these snapshots will be stored behind the scenes in s3. Reference: Creating an Amazon EBS Snapshot

You can create EBS snapshots using the AWS CLI command create-snapshot

+ Resources

• Copying an Amazon EBS Snapshot
• Copying an AMI