VM Import Update – Faster and More Flexible, with Multi-Volume Support Now Available for AWS GovCloud (US) Customers

ImportImage and ImportSnapshot functions have been added to the API, which greatly improves the VM Import/Export service. ImportImage allows customers to import multiple volume and multiple disk images.

This update provides significant improvements in the upload performance so that you can easily import virtual machine images from your on-premises environment to and from Amazon EC2 instances in the cloud. You can leverage existing investments in the virtual machines you’ve already built to meet your IT security, configuration management, and compliance requirements by bringing those VMs into Amazon EC2 as ready-to-use instances. VM Import/Export is available at no additional cost beyond standard usage charges for Amazon EC2 and Amazon S3. For more information go to our blog. Get Started.

Features and Benefits:

• The new ImportImage and ImportSnapshot functions are faster and more flexible than the existing ImportInstance function.
• ImportImage accepts image files that contain multiple disks and/or multiple disk volumes. This makes it a better match for the complex storage configurations that are often required in an enterprise-scale environment.
• You can use the AWS Management Console, AWS Command Line Interface (CLI), AWS Tools for Windows PowerShell, or custom tools built around the Amazon S3 API. (If you choose the custom tool option, be sure to take advantage of multipart uploads.)
• ImportImage generates an AMI that can be launched as many times as required. This is simpler, more flexible, and easier to work with than the stopped instance built by ImportInstance.