Lab Information
The Nautilus DevOps team is strategizing the migration of a portion of their infrastructure to the AWS cloud. Recognizing the scale of this undertaking, they have opted to approach the migration in incremental steps rather than as a single massive transition. To achieve this, they have segmented large tasks into smaller, more manageable units. This granular approach enables the team to execute the migration in gradual phases, ensuring smoother implementation and minimizing disruption to ongoing operations. By breaking down the migration into smaller tasks, the Nautilus DevOps team can systematically progress through each stage, allowing for better control, risk mitigation, and optimization of resources throughout the migration process.
For this task, create an AMI from an existing EC2 instance named devops-ec2 with the following requirement:
Name of the AMI should be devops-ec2-ami, make sure AMI is in available state.
Lab Solutions
Step-by-Step Instructions (AWS Console)
- Log in to AWS Console
Use your lab credentials and ensure the region is us-east-1.
- Navigate to the EC2 Instance
Go to EC2 service
Click Instances
Find and select the instance named devops-ec2
Ensure:
It is in running state (recommended)
- Create the AMI
With devops-ec2 selected:
Click Actions
Select Image and templates
Click Create image
A form will appear.
Fill in the required details:
Image name: devops-ec2-ami
Image description: (optional)
No reboot:
Default (reboot allowed) is safer and recommended.
Click Create image
AWS will now start generating the AMI.
- Verify AMI Creation
Go to Images → AMIs in the left EC2 menu.
Ensure Owned by me is selected.
Find AMI named devops-ec2-ami
Initially, the State will show:
pending
Wait until it becomes:
available
This may take a few minutes depending on instance size.
Resources & Next Steps
- 📦 Full Code Repository: KodeKloud Learning Labs
- 📖 More Deep Dives: Whispering Cloud Insights - Read other technical articles
- 💬 Join Discussion: DEV Community - Share your thoughts and questions
- 💼 Let's Connect: Linkedin - I'd love to connect with you
Credits
- All labs are from: KodeKloud
- Thanks for providing them.
Top comments (2)
That's a great post! I recently tried creating an AMI (Amazon Machine Image) from one of my instances, and I ran into an issue with the completion time.The instance was a t4.2xlarge with a significant amount of data, and the AMI creation process stayed in the "pending" state for hours. I eventually stopped the process because it seemed stuck.I'm wondering if anyone has experience with this size of instance: What is the normal expected time for an AMI created from a t4.2xlarge to transition to the "available" state?Any insights into factors that drastically increase this time (like large root volumes, number of attached EBS volumes, etc.) would be really helpful!
In my experience, it seems like “stuck” while it's actually still working in the background.
With large volume < 500GB
Commonly 30–120 minutes.
AWS does not base AMI creation time on instance type (t4g, m5, r5, etc.).
The limiting factor is EBS snapshot creation time, not CPU or RAM.
So the fact your instance was a t4.2xlarge doesn’t reduce snapshot time at all.
Note: The very first snapshot is always the slowest, since AWS must copy all used blocks.Future snapshots are incremental and much faster.
Check EBS volume, must gp3.
And Create EBS snapshots manually.
Then register an AMI from the snapshots.