Document History

P2 instances

2016-09-15

P2 instances use NVIDIA Tesla K80 GPUs and are designed for general purpose GPU computing using the CUDA or OpenCL programming models. For more information, see Linux Accelerated Computing Instances.

2016-04-01

Expands the range of the general-purpose M4 family with the introduction of a new m4.16xlarge with 64 vCPUs and 256 GiB of RAM.

Automatic scaling for Spot fleet

You can now set up scaling policies for your Spot fleet. For more information, see Automatic Scaling for Spot Fleet.

Run Command support for managed instances

2016-04-01

Amazon EC2 Run Command now supports the management of on-premises servers and virtual machines (VMs) and VMs from other cloud providers. For more information, see Setting Up Run Command in Hybrid Environments

Elastic Network Adapter (ENA)

2016-04-01

You can now use ENA for enhanced networking. For more information, see Enhanced Networking Types.

Enhanced support for viewing and modifying longer IDs

2016-04-01

You can now view and modify longer ID settings for other IAM users, IAM roles, or the root user. For more information, see Resource IDs.

Copy encrypted Amazon EBS snapshots between AWS accounts

2016-04-01

You can now copy encrypted EBS snapshots between AWS accounts. For more information, see Copying an Amazon EBS Snapshot.

Capture a screenshot of an instance console

2015-10-01

You can now obtain additional information when debugging instances that are unreachable. For more information, see Capture a Screenshot of an Unreachable Instance.

X1 instances

2015-10-01

Memory-optimized instances designed for running in-memory databases, big data processing engines, and high performance computing (HPC) applications. For more information, see X1 Instances.

Two new EBS volume types

2015-10-01

You can now create Throughput Optimized HDD (st1) and Cold HDD (sc1) volumes. For more information, see Amazon EBS Volume Types.

Added new NetworkPacketsIn and NetworkPacketsOut metrics for Amazon EC2

Added new NetworkPacketsIn and NetworkPacketsOut metrics for Amazon EC2. For more information, see Instance Metrics.

CloudWatch metrics for Spot fleet

You can now get CloudWatch metrics for your Spot fleet. For more information, see CloudWatch Metrics for Spot Fleet.

Scheduled Instances

2015-10-01

Scheduled Reserved Instances (Scheduled Instances) enable you to purchase capacity reservations that recur on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis, with a specified start time and duration. For more information, see Scheduled Reserved Instances.

Longer resource IDs

2015-10-01

We're gradually introducing longer length IDs for some Amazon EC2 and Amazon EBS resource types. During the opt-in period, you can enable the longer ID format for supported resource types. For more information, see Resource IDs.

ClassicLink DNS support

2015-10-01

You can enable ClassicLink DNS support for your VPC so that DNS hostnames that are addressed between linked EC2-Classic instances and instances in the VPC resolve to private IP addresses and not public IP addresses. For more information, see Enabling ClassicLink DNS Support.

New t2.nano instance type

2015-10-01

T2 instances are designed to provide moderate base performance and the capability to burst to significantly higher performance as required by your workload. They are intended for applications that need responsiveness, high performance for limited periods of time, and a low cost. For more information, see T2 Instances.

Dedicated hosts

2015-10-01

An Amazon EC2 Dedicated host is a physical server with instance capacity dedicated for your use. For more information, see Dedicated Hosts.

Spot instance duration

2015-10-01

You can now specify a duration for your Spot instances. For more information, see Specifying a Duration for Your Spot Instances.

Spot fleet modify request

2015-10-01

You can now modify the target capacity of your Spot fleet request. For more information, see Modifying a Spot Fleet Request.

Spot fleet diversified allocation strategy

2015-04-15

You can now allocate Spot instances in multiple Spot pools using a single Spot fleet request. For more information, see Spot Fleet Allocation Strategy.

Spot fleet instance weighting

2015-04-15

You can now define the capacity units that each instance type contributes to your application's performance, and adjust your bid price for each Spot pool accordingly. For more information, see Spot Fleet Instance Weighting.

New reboot alarm action and new IAM role for use with alarm actions

Added the reboot alarm action and new IAM role for use with alarm actions. For more information, see Create Alarms That Stop, Terminate, Reboot, or Recover an Instance.

New t2.large instance type

T2 instances are designed to provide moderate base performance and the capability to burst to significantly higher performance as required by your workload. They are intended for applications that need responsiveness, high performance for limited periods of time, and a low cost. For more information, see T2 Instances.

16 June 2015

M4 instances

The next generation of general-purpose instances that provide a balance of compute, memory, and network resources. M4 instances are powered by a custom Intel 2.4 GHz Intel® Xeon® E5 2676v3 (Haswell) processor with AVX2.

Spot fleets

2015-04-15

You can manage a collection, or fleet, of Spot instances instead of managing separate Spot instance requests. For more information, see How Spot Fleet Works.

Migrate Elastic IP addresses to EC2-Classic

2015-04-15

You can migrate an Elastic IP address that you've allocated for use in the EC2-Classic platform to the EC2-VPC platform. For more information, see Migrating an Elastic IP Address from EC2-Classic to EC2-VPC.

Importing VMs with multiple disks as AMIs

2015-03-01

The VM Import process now supports importing VMs with multiple disks as AMIs. For more information, see Importing a VM as an Image Using VM Import/Export in the VM Import/Export User Guide .

New g2.8xlarge instance type

The new g2.8xlarge instance is backed by four high-performance NVIDIA GPUs, making it well suited for GPU compute workloads including large scale rendering, transcoding, machine learning, and other server-side workloads that require massive parallel processing power.

7 April 2015

Next generation Amazon EC2 dense-storage instances that are optimized for applications requiring sequential access to large amount of data on direct attached instance storage. D2 instances are designed to offer best price/performance in the dense-storage family. Powered by 2.4 GHz Intel® Xeon® E5 2676v3 (Haswell) processors, D2 instances improve on HS1 instances by providing additional compute power, more memory, and Enhanced Networking. In addition, D2 instances are available in four instance sizes with 6TB, 12TB, 24TB, and 48TB storage options.

For more information, see D2 Instances.

24 March 2015

You can create an Amazon CloudWatch alarm that monitors an Amazon EC2 instance and automatically recovers the instance if it becomes impaired due to an underlying hardware failure or a problem that requires AWS involvement to repair. A recovered instance is identical to the original instance, including the instance ID, IP addresses, and all instance metadata.

For more information, see Recover Your Instance.

12 January 2015

Next-generation compute-optimized instances that provide very high CPU performance at an economical price. C4 instances are based on custom 2.9 GHz Intel® Xeon® E5-2666 v3 (Haswell) processors. With additional Turbo boost, the processor clock speed in C4 instances can reach as high as 3.5Ghz with 1 or 2 core turbo. Expanding on the capabilities of C3 compute-optimized instances, C4 instances offer customers the highest processor performance among EC2 instances. These instances are ideally suited for high-traffic web applications, ad serving, batch processing, video encoding, distributed analytics, high-energy physics, genome analysis, and computational fluid dynamics.

For more information, see C4 Instances.

11 January 2015

2014-10-01

ClassicLink enables you to link your EC2-Classic instance to a VPC in your account. You can associate VPC security groups with the EC2-Classic instance, enabling communication between your EC2-Classic instance and instances in your VPC using private IP addresses. For more information, see ClassicLink.

7 January 2015

The best way to protect against Spot instance interruption is to architect your application to be fault tolerant. In addition, you can take advantage of Spot instance termination notices, which provide a two-minute warning before Amazon EC2 must terminate your Spot instance.

For more information, see Spot Instance Termination Notices.

5 January 2015

DescribeVolumes pagination support

2014-09-01

The DescribeVolumes API call now supports the pagination of results with the MaxResults and NextToken parameters. For more information, see DescribeVolumes in the Amazon EC2 API Reference.

23 October 2014

2014-06-15

T2 instances are designed to provide moderate base performance and the capability to burst to significantly higher performance as required by your workload. They are intended for applications that need responsiveness, high performance for limited periods of time, and a low cost. For more information, see T2 Instances.

30 June 2014

Use the EC2 Service Limits page in the Amazon EC2 console to view the current limits for resources provided by Amazon EC2 and Amazon VPC, on a per-region basis.

19 June 2014

2014-05-01

General Purpose SSD volumes offer cost-effective storage that is ideal for a broad range of workloads. These volumes deliver single-digit millisecond latencies, the ability to burst to 3,000 IOPS for extended periods of time, and a base performance of 3 IOPS/GiB. General Purpose SSD volumes can range in size from 1 GiB to 1 TiB. For more information, see General Purpose SSD (gp2) Volumes.

16 June 2014

2014-05-01

Amazon EBS encryption offers seamless encryption of EBS data volumes and snapshots, eliminating the need to build and maintain a secure key management infrastructure. EBS encryption enables data at rest security by encrypting your data using Amazon-managed keys. The encryption occurs on the servers that host EC2 instances, providing encryption of data as it moves between EC2 instances and EBS storage. For more information, see Amazon EBS Encryption.

21 May 2014

2014-02-01

Next generation memory-optimized instances with the best price point per GiB of RAM and high performance. These instances are ideally suited for relational and NoSQL databases, in-memory analytics solutions, scientific computing, and other memory-intensive applications that can benefit from the high memory per vCPU, high compute performance, and enhanced networking capabilities of R3 instances.

For more information about the hardware specifications for each Amazon EC2 instance type, see Amazon EC2 Instances.

9 April 2014

Amazon Linux AMI 2014.03 is released.

27 March 2014

Amazon EC2 Usage Reports

Amazon EC2 Usage Reports is a set of reports that shows cost and usage data of your usage of EC2. For more information, see Amazon EC2 Usage Reports.

28 January 2014

Additional M3 instances

2013-10-15

The M3 instance sizes m3.medium and m3.large are now supported. For more information about the hardware specifications for each Amazon EC2 instance type, see Amazon EC2 Instances.

20 January 2014

I2 instances

2013-10-15

These instances provide very high IOPS and support TRIM on Linux instances for better successive SSD write performance. I2 instances also support enhanced networking that delivers improve inter-instance latencies, lower network jitter, and significantly higher packet per second (PPS) performance. For more information, see I2 Instances.

19 December 2013

Updated M3 instances

2013-10-15

The M3 instance sizes, m3.xlarge and m3.2xlarge now support instance store with SSD volumes. For more information about the hardware specifications for each Amazon EC2 instance type, see Amazon EC2 Instances.

19 December 2013

Importing Linux virtual machines

2013-10-15

The VM Import process now supports the importation of Linux instances. For more information, see the VM Import/Export User Guide.

Resource-level permissions for RunInstances

2013-10-15

You can now create policies in AWS Identity and Access Management to control resource-level permissions for the Amazon EC2 RunInstances API action. For more information and example policies, see Controlling Access to Amazon EC2 Resources.

20 November 2013

C3 instances

2013-10-15

Compute-optimized instances that provide very high CPU performance at an economical price. C3 instances also support enhanced networking that delivers improved inter-instance latencies, lower network jitter, and significantly higher packet per second (PPS) performance. These instances are ideally suited for high-traffic web applications, ad serving, batch processing, video encoding, distributed analytics, high-energy physics, genome analysis, and computational fluid dynamics.

For more information about the hardware specifications for each Amazon EC2 instance type, see Amazon EC2 Instances.

14 November 2013

Launching an instance from the AWS Marketplace

You can now launch an instance from the AWS Marketplace using the Amazon EC2 launch wizard. For more information, see Launching an AWS Marketplace Instance.

11 November 2013

G2 instances

2013-10-01

These instances are ideally suited for video creation services, 3D visualizations, streaming graphics-intensive applications, and other server-side workloads requiring massive parallel processing power. For more information, see Linux Accelerated Computing Instances.

4 November 2013

New launch wizard

There is a new and redesigned EC2 launch wizard. For more information, see Launching an Instance.

10 October 2013

Modifying Instance Types of Amazon EC2 Reserved Instances

2013-10-01

You can now modify the instance type of Linux Reserved Instances within the same family (for example, M1, M2, M3, C1). For more information, see Modifying Your Standard Reserved Instances.

09 October 2013

Amazon Linux AMI 2013.09 is released.

Modifying Amazon EC2 Reserved Instances

2013-08-15

You can now modify Reserved Instances in a region. For more information, see Modifying Your Standard Reserved Instances.

11 September 2013

Assigning a public IP address

2013-07-15

You can now assign a public IP address when you launch an instance in a VPC. For more information, see Assigning a Public IP Address.

20 August 2013

Granting resource-level permissions

2013-06-15

Amazon EC2 supports new Amazon Resource Names (ARNs) and condition keys. For more information, see IAM Policies for Amazon EC2.

8 July 2013

Incremental Snapshot Copies

2013-02-01

You can now perform incremental snapshot copies. For more information, see Copying an Amazon EBS Snapshot.

11 June 2013

New Tags page

There is a new Tags page in the Amazon EC2 console. For more information, see Tagging Your Amazon EC2 Resources.

New Amazon Linux AMI release

Amazon Linux AMI 2013.03 is released.

Additional EBS-optimized instance types

2013-02-01

The following instance types can now be launched as EBS-optimized instances: c1.xlarge, m2.2xlarge, m3.xlarge, and m3.2xlarge.

For more information, see Amazon EBS–Optimized Instances.

Copy an AMI from one region to another

2013-02-01

You can copy an AMI from one region to another, enabling you to launch consistent instances in more than one AWS region quickly and easily.

For more information, see Copying an AMI.

Launch instances into a default VPC

2013-02-01

Your AWS account is capable of launching instances into either the EC2-Classic or EC2-VPC platform, or only into the EC2-VPC platform, on a region-by-region basis. If you can launch instances only into EC2-VPC, we create a default VPC for you. When you launch an instance, we launch it into your default VPC, unless you create a nondefault VPC and specify it when you launch the instance.

For more information, see Supported Platforms.

High-memory cluster (cr1.8xlarge) instance type

2012-12-01

Have large amounts of memory coupled with high CPU and network performance. These instances are well suited for in-memory analytics, graph analysis, and scientific computing applications.

High storage (hs1.8xlarge) instance type

2012-12-01

High storage instances provide very high storage density and high sequential read and write performance per instance. They are well-suited for data warehousing, Hadoop/MapReduce, and parallel file systems. For more information, see HS1 Instances.

EBS snapshot copy

2012-12-01

You can use snapshot copies to create backups of data, to create new Amazon EBS volumes, or to create Amazon Machine Images (AMIs). For more information, see Copying an Amazon EBS Snapshot.

Updated EBS metrics and status checks for Provisioned IOPS SSD volumes

2012-10-01

Updated the EBS metrics to include two new metrics for Provisioned IOPS SSD volumes. For more information, see Monitoring Volumes with CloudWatch. Also added new status checks for Provisioned IOPS SSD volumes. For more information, see Monitoring Volumes with Status Checks.

Linux Kernels

Updated AKI IDs; reorganized distribution kernels; updated PVOps section.

31 October 2012

Spot instance request status

2012-10-01

Spot instance request status makes it easy to determine the state of your Spot requests.

New Amazon Linux AMI release

Amazon Linux AMI 2012.09 is released.

11 September 2012

Provisioned IOPS SSD for Amazon EBS

2012-07-20

Provisioned IOPS SSD volumes deliver predictable, high performance for I/O intensive workloads, such as database applications, that rely on consistent and fast response times. For more information, see Amazon EBS Volume Types.

31 July 2012

High I/O instances for Amazon EC2

2012-06-15

High I/O instances provides very high, low latency, disk I/O performance using SSD-based local instance storage. For more information, see HI1 Instances.

18 July 2012

IAM roles on Amazon EC2 instances

2012-06-01

IAM roles for Amazon EC2 provide:

Spot instance features that make it easier to get started and handle the potential of interruption.

You can now manage your Spot instances as follows:

EC2 instance export and timestamps for status checks for Amazon EC2

2012-05-01

Added support for timestamps on instance status and system status to indicate the date and time that a status check failed.

EC2 instance export, and timestamps in instance and system status checks for Amazon VPC

2012-05-01

Added support for EC2 instance export to Citrix Xen, Microsoft Hyper-V, and VMware vSphere.

Added support for timestamps in instance and system status checks.

Cluster Compute Eight Extra Large instances

2012-04-01

Added support for cc2.8xlarge instances in a VPC.

AWS Marketplace AMIs

2012-04-01

Added support for AWS Marketplace AMIs.

New Linux AMI release

Amazon Linux AMI 2012.03 is released.

New AKI version

We've released AKI version 1.03 and AKIs for the AWS GovCloud (US) region.

Medium instances, support for 64-bit on all AMIs, and a Java-based SSH Client

2011-12-15

Added support for a new instance type and 64-bit information. Added procedures for using the Java-based SSH client to connect to Linux instances.

Reserved Instance pricing tiers

2011-12-15

Added a new section discussing how to take advantage of the discount pricing that is built into the Reserved Instance pricing tiers.

Elastic Network Interfaces (ENIs) for EC2 instances in Amazon Virtual Private Cloud

2011-12-01

Added new section about elastic network interfaces (ENIs) for EC2 instances in a VPC. For more information, see Elastic Network Interfaces (ENI).

New GRU Region and AKIs

Added information about the release of new AKIs for the SA-East-1 Region. This release deprecates the AKI version 1.01. AKI version 1.02 will continue to be backward compatible.

New offering types for Amazon EC2 Reserved Instances

2011-11-01

You can choose from a variety of Reserved Instance offerings that address your projected use of the instance.

Amazon EC2 instance status

2011-11-01

You can view additional details about the status of your instances, including scheduled events planned by AWS that might have an impact on your instances. These operational activities include instance reboots required to apply software updates or security patches, or instance retirements required where there are hardware issues. For more information, see Monitoring the Status of Your Instances.

Amazon EC2 Cluster Compute Instance Type

Added support for Cluster Compute Eight Extra Large (cc2.8xlarge) to Amazon EC2.

New PDX Region and AKIs

Added information about the release of new AKIs for the new US-West 2 Region.

Spot instances in Amazon VPC

2011-07-15

Added information about the support for Spot instances in Amazon VPC. With this update, users can launch Spot instances a virtual private cloud (VPC). By launching Spot instances in a VPC, users of Spot instances can enjoy the benefits of Amazon VPC.

New Linux AMI release

Added information about the release of Amazon Linux AMI 2011.09. This update removes the beta tag from the Amazon Linux AMI, supports the ability to lock the repositories to a specific version, and provides for notification when updates are available to installed packages including security updates.

Simplified VM import process for users of the CLI tools

2011-07-15

The VM Import process is simplified with the enhanced functionality of ImportInstance and ImportVolume, which now will perform the upload of the images into Amazon EC2 after creating the import task. In addition, with the introduction of ResumeImport, users can restart an incomplete upload at the point the task stopped.

Support for importing in VHD file format

VM Import can now import virtual machine image files in VHD format. The VHD file format is compatible with the Citrix Xen and Microsoft Hyper-V virtualization platforms. With this release, VM Import now supports RAW, VHD and VMDK (VMware ESX-compatible) image formats. For more information, see the VM Import/Export User Guide.

Update to the Amazon EC2 VM Import Connector for VMware vCenter

Added information about the 1.1 version of the Amazon EC2 VM Import Connector for VMware vCenter virtual appliance (Connector). This update includes proxy support for Internet access, better error handling, improved task progress bar accuracy, and several bug fixes.

Enabling Linux AMI to run user-provided kernels

Added information about the AKI version change from 1.01 to 1.02. This version updates the PVGRUB to address launch failures associated with t1.micro Linux instances. For more information, see User Provided Kernels.

Spot instances Availability Zone pricing changes

2011-05-15

Added information about the Spot instances Availability Zone pricing feature. In this release, we've added new Availability Zone pricing options as part of the information returned when you query for Spot instance requests and Spot price history. These additions make it easier to determine the price required to launch a Spot instance into a particular Availability Zone.

AWS Identity and Access Management

Added information about AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM), which enables users to specify which Amazon EC2 actions a user can use with Amazon EC2 resources in general. For more information, see Controlling Access to Amazon EC2 Resources.

Enabling Linux AMI to run user-provided kernels

Added information about enabling a Linux AMI to use PVGRUB Amazon Kernel Image (AKI) to run a user-provided kernel. For more information, see User Provided Kernels.

Dedicated instances

Launched within your Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC), Dedicated Instances are instances that are physically isolated at the host hardware level. Dedicated Instances let you take advantage of Amazon VPC and the AWS cloud, with benefits including on-demand elastic provisioning and pay only for what you use, while isolating your Amazon EC2 compute instances at the hardware level. For more information, see Using EC2 Dedicated Instances in the Amazon VPC User Guide.

Reserved Instances updates to the AWS Management Console

Updates to the AWS Management Console make it easier for users to view their Reserved Instances and purchase additional Reserved Instances, including Dedicated Reserved Instances. For more information, see Reserved Instances.

New Amazon Linux reference AMI

The new Amazon Linux reference AMI replaces the CentOS reference AMI. Removed information about the CentOS reference AMI, including the section named Correcting Clock Drift for Cluster Instances on CentOS 5.4 AMI. For more information, see AMIs for Accelerated Computing Instances.

15 March 2011

Metadata information

2011-01-01

Added information about metadata to reflect changes in the 2011-01-01 release. For more information, see Instance Metadata and User Data and Instance Metadata Categories.

11 March 2011

Amazon EC2 VM Import Connector for VMware vCenter

Added information about the Amazon EC2 VM Import Connector for VMware vCenter virtual appliance (Connector). The Connector is a plug-in for VMware vCenter that integrates with VMware vSphere Client and provides a graphical user interface that you can use to import your VMware virtual machines to Amazon EC2.

Force volume detachment

You can now use the AWS Management Console to force the detachment of an Amazon EBS volume from an instance. For more information, see Detaching an Amazon EBS Volume from an Instance.

23 February 2011

Instance termination protection

You can now use the AWS Management Console to prevent an instance from being terminated. For more information, see Enabling Termination Protection for an Instance.

23 February 2011

Correcting Clock Drift for Cluster Instances on CentOS 5.4 AMI

Added information about how to correct clock drift for cluster instances running on Amazon's CentOS 5.4 AMI.

25 January 2011

VM Import

2010-11-15

Added information about VM Import, which allows you to import a virtual machine or volume into Amazon EC2. For more information, see the VM Import/Export User Guide.

15 December 2010

Basic monitoring for instances

2010-08-31

Added information about basic monitoring for EC2 instances.

12 December 2010

Cluster GPU instances

2010-08-31

Amazon EC2 offers cluster GPU instances (cg1.4xlarge) for high-performance computing (HPC) applications. For more information about the hardware specifications for each Amazon EC2 instance type, see Amazon EC2 Instances.

14 November 2010

Filters and Tags

2010-08-31

Added information about listing, filtering, and tagging resources. For more information, see Listing and Filtering Your Resources and Tagging Your Amazon EC2 Resources.

19 September 2010

Idempotent Instance Launch

2010-08-31

Added information about ensuring idempotency when running instances. For more information, see Ensuring Idempotency in the Amazon EC2 API Reference.

19 September 2010

Micro instances

2010-06-15

Amazon EC2 offers the t1.micro instance type for certain types of applications. For more information, see T1 Micro Instances.

8 September 2010

AWS Identity and Access Management for Amazon EC2

Amazon EC2 now integrates with AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM). For more information, see Controlling Access to Amazon EC2 Resources.

2 September 2010

Cluster instances

2010-06-15

Amazon EC2 offers cluster compute instances for high-performance computing (HPC) applications. For more information about the hardware specifications for each Amazon EC2 instance type, see Amazon EC2 Instances.

12 July 2010

Amazon VPC IP Address Designation

2010-06-15

Amazon VPC users can now specify the IP address to assign an instance launched in a VPC.

12 July 2010

Amazon CloudWatch Monitoring for Amazon EBS Volumes

Amazon CloudWatch monitoring is now automatically available for Amazon EBS volumes. For more information, see Monitoring Volumes with CloudWatch.

14 June 2010

High-memory extra large instances

2009-11-30

Amazon EC2 now supports a High-Memory Extra Large (m2.xlarge) instance type. For more information about the hardware specifications for each Amazon EC2 instance type, see Amazon EC2 Instances.

22 February 2010