Amazon Machine Image
Encyclopedia
An Amazon Machine Image 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.
s, the main component of an AMI is a read-only filesystem image which includes an operating system (e.g., Linux, UNIX, or Windows) and any additional software required to deliver a service or a portion of it.
The AMI filesystem is compressed, encrypted, signed, split into a series of 10MB chunks and uploaded into Amazon S3 for storage. An XML manifest file stores information about the AMI, including name, version, architecture, default kernel id, decryption key and digests for all of the filesystem chunks.
An AMI does not include a kernel image, only a pointer to the default kernel id, which can be chosen from an approved list of safe kernels maintained by Amazon and its partners (e.g., RedHat, Canonical, Microsoft). Users may choose kernels other than the default when booting an AMI.
Virtual appliance
A virtual appliance is a virtual machine image designed to run on a virtualization platform ....
which is used to instantiate (create) a virtual machine
Virtual machine
A virtual machine is a "completely isolated guest operating system installation within a normal host operating system". Modern virtual machines are implemented with either software emulation or hardware virtualization or both together.-VM Definitions:A virtual machine is a software...
within the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud. It serves as the basic unit of deployment for services delivered using EC2.
Contents
Like all virtual applianceVirtual appliance
A virtual appliance is a virtual machine image designed to run on a virtualization platform ....
s, the main component of an AMI is a read-only filesystem image which includes an operating system (e.g., Linux, UNIX, or Windows) and any additional software required to deliver a service or a portion of it.
The AMI filesystem is compressed, encrypted, signed, split into a series of 10MB chunks and uploaded into Amazon S3 for storage. An XML manifest file stores information about the AMI, including name, version, architecture, default kernel id, decryption key and digests for all of the filesystem chunks.
An AMI does not include a kernel image, only a pointer to the default kernel id, which can be chosen from an approved list of safe kernels maintained by Amazon and its partners (e.g., RedHat, Canonical, Microsoft). Users may choose kernels other than the default when booting an AMI.
Types of images
- Public: an AMI image that can be used by anyone.
- Paid: a for-pay AMI image that is registered with Amazon DevPay and can be used by any one who subscribes for it. DevPay allows developers to mark-up Amazon's usage fees and optionally add monthly subscription fees.
- Shared: a private AMI that can only be used by Amazon EC2 users who are allowed access to it by the developer.