Amazon Machine Image

Launch a new instance and then select Community AMIs

You can select your AMI based on

- Region 
- Operating System
- Architecture
- Launch Permissions
- Storage for the Root Device which could be:
  - Instance Store (EPHEMERAL STORAGE)
  - Elastic Block Store Backed Volume
                                    

EBS

- The root device for an instance launched from the AMI is an Amazon EBS volume created from an Amazon EBS snapshot.
- EBS backed instances can be stopped or rebooted. You will not lose the data of the instance if it is stopped.
- By default root volumes will be deleted on termination of the instance. You CAN tell AWS to keep the root device volume when terminating an instance.
                                    

Instance Store Volumes

- The root device for an instance launched from the AMI is an instance store volume created from a template stored in Amazon S3.
- When selecting 'Instance store' the Instance Types that you can select will be restricted.
- At the 'Add Storage' section, you wiil notice the Volume Type is 'Instance Store'.
- You can add additional instance store volumes at this stage, but not after launching the instance.
- You can however add additional EBS volumes after launching your instance.
- EC2 instances utillizing Instance Store cannot be stopped, only Rebooted or Terminated. If the underlying host fails, you will lose your data.
- By default Instance Store root device volumes will be deleted on termination. This cannot be altered.