Create Ubuntu AMI from Scratch on local machine

This guide will explain about creating AMI from scratch. Here we will create AMI on local system. The main benefit of creating AMI on local system is cost saving; we do not need to launch instance for configuring application. Instead we can configure our OS, install / configure required software and then create AMI on local system. Then we can upload newly created AMI on s3. Now from this AMI we can launch instance when we need them. In this way we will get pre-configured instance. In this tutorial we will create Ubuntu AMI from scratch. You can also follow same procedure on cloud (ie you can create this on instance also)

In this tutorial we will create (create AMI from scratch on local system), bundle (bundle the image), upload (upload newly created AMI on s3), run(run the instance based on this AMI) AMI.

What AMI is: An Amazon Machine Image (AMI) is a special type of virtual appliance which is used to instantiate (create) a virtual machine within the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud. It serves as the basic unit of deployment for services delivered using EC2. We can say that AMI is an image from which an instance can boot

Create an AMI

This blog will guide you through creating an Ubuntu AMI (Amazon Machine Image) from a launched Instance. In this tutorial we will create S3 backed AMI from running instance (Ubuntu). Before getting down to create an actual AMI let’s try to understand some basic terminologies:

Understand what AMI is: An Amazon Machine Image (AMI) is a special type of virtual appliance which is used to instantiate (create) a virtual machine within the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud. It serves as the basic unit of deployment for services delivered using EC2. We can say that AMI is an image from which an instance can boot.

What is Amazon EC2: Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) is a web service that provides resizable compute capacity in the cloud. It is designed to make web-scale computing easier for developers

Create your own AMI, so that you can boot new custom instance which have all the required software preinstalled. Your AMI becomes basic unit of deployment; it will save your time of installing required software again and again.