Creating your own ArcGIS Server AMI

After deploying the ArcGIS Server Amazon Machine Image (AMI) or the enterprise geodatabase (EGDB) AMI, you'll upload data and add your own services and applications. Once you've customized your machine, you can create your own AMI representing the current state of your machine. This custom AMI is essential when scaling out your cloud-based deployment.

You use your custom AMIs to launch identical EC2 instances of your ArcGIS Server, which you can connect under an Amazon Elastic Load Balancer (ELB). Creating an AMI is also a good way to back up your machine configuration if you need to terminate instances or attempt something with a degree of risk.

Creating a custom AMI copies any Elastic Block Store (EBS) volumes that you may have attached. Be aware that this will affect your costs when the custom AMI is deployed. For example, you may have a 100 GB attached EBS volume on your current EC2 instance. If you create a custom AMI from your instance and deploy it five times, you will be charged for five new EC2 instances and five 100 GB EBS volumes.

Use the following procedure to create your own AMI:

Steps:

1. Configure an EC2 instance and its attached EBS volumes in the exact way you want them created in the custom AMI.
   Caution:

   Creating a custom AMI makes an exact copy of the current state of your EC2 instance. Before you continue, remove all personal information from your EC2 instance, including stored information such as Web browser cookies and temporary files.

2. Log out of your instance, but do not stop or terminate it.
3. In the AWS Management Console, click the Amazon EC2 tab, then click Instances.
4. Right-click the instance from which you want to create a custom AMI and click Create Image (EBS AMI).
5. Type a name for Image Name that is easily identifiable to you and, optionally, input text for Image Description.
6. Click Create This Image.
7. Read the message box that appears, then click View pending image. Here you can see your AMI being created. It can take a while to create the AMI. Plan for at least 20 minutes, or longer if you've installed a lot of additional applications or data. If you exit the console and return to it, you can always click AMIs on the Amazon EC2 tab to see the status of your AMI.

You launch an instance from a custom AMI the same way you launch an instance from the ArcGIS Server AMI; however, in the first page of the Request Instances Wizard, click the My AMIs tab and choose your custom AMI. If there are many AMIs in the list, you should be able to discern your AMI using the Name field, which includes the image name you typed when you created the AMI.

Caution:

AMIs that you create with ArcGIS Server are for individual use and are allowed only for the purpose of configuring your own ArcGIS Server deployment on Amazon. They are not to be redistributed or shared with any other parties.