EC2 Instance Retirement - Just restart or launch new instance from AMI?

Question

I have received an email about an EC2 instance that is to be retired on the 1/12/2015. I can provide more details on the case if need be. I have gone through this process before (approx a year ago), and it all went smoothly. The only difference this time is in the instructions. Last time, according to the instructions, all I had to do, was just restart my instance. Now, I have to create an AMI from my instance, and launch a new instance with that AMI. Please, note that in both cases my instances were/are EBS backed.

Do I really need to create an AMI and launch a new instance or just restarting the instance would do? Please, keep in mind, that I need to keep my EBS data intact.

Cheers,
Iraklis

Answer 1

From the AWS EC2 documentation:

Managing Instances Scheduled for Retirement

You can perform one of the actions listed below in order to preserve the data on your retiring instance. It's important that you take this action before the instance retirement date, to prevent unforeseen downtime and data loss.

Warning If your instance store-backed instance passes its retirement date, it's terminated and you cannot recover the instance or any data that was stored on it. Regardless of the root device of your instance, the data on instance store volumes is lost when the instance is retired, even if they are attached to an EBS-backed instance.

An instance is scheduled to be retired when AWS detects irreparable failure of the underlying hardware hosting the instance. When an instance reaches its scheduled retirement date, it is stopped or terminated by AWS. If your instance root device is an Amazon EBS volume, the instance is stopped, and you can start it again at any time. Starting the stopped instance migrates it to new hardware. If your instance root device is an instance store volume, the instance is terminated, and cannot be used again.

Instance Root Device Type: EBS

Action: Wait for the scheduled retirement date - when the instance is stopped - or stop the instance yourself before the retirement date. You can start the instance again at any time. For more information about stopping and starting your instance, and what to expect when your instance is stopped, such as the effect on public, private and Elastic IP addresses associated with your instance, see Stop and Start Your Instance.

Instance Root Device Type: EBS

Action: Create an EBS-backed AMI from your instance, and launch a replacement instance. For more information, see Creating an Amazon EBS-Backed Linux AMI.

Instance Root Device Type: Instance store

Action: Create an instance store-backed AMI from your instance using the AMI tools, and launch a replacement instance. For more information, see Creating an Instance Store-Backed Linux AMI.

Instance Root Device Type: Instance store

Action: Convert your instance to an EBS-backed instance by transferring your data to an EBS volume, taking a snapshot of the volume, and then creating an AMI from the snapshot. You can launch a replacement instance from your new AMI. For more information, see Converting your Instance Store-Backed AMI to an Amazon EBS-Backed AMI.