Launch an instance from a launch template

To create a new launch template using defined parameters using the console

1. Open the Amazon EC2 console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/ec2/.

2. In the navigation pane, choose Launch Templates, and then choose Create launch template.

3. For Launch template name, enter a descriptive name for the launch template.

4. For Template version description, provide a brief description of this version of the launch template.

5. To tag the launch template on creation, expand Template tags, choose Add tag, and then enter a tag key and value pair.

6. For Amazon machine image (AMI), provide the following information:

   • AMI: An AMI from which to launch the instance. To search through all available AMIs, choose Search for AMI. To select a commonly used AMI, choose Quick Start. Or, choose AWS Marketplace or Community AMIs. You can use an AMI that you own or find a suitable AMI.

7. For Instance type, you can either select an instance type, or you can specify instance attributes and let Amazon EC2 identify the instance types with those attributes.

   Note

   Specifying instance attributes is supported only when using Auto Scaling groups, EC2 Fleet, and Spot Fleet to launch instances. For more information, see Creating an Auto Scaling group using attribute-based instance type selection, Attribute-based instance type selection for EC2 Fleet, and Attribute-based instance type selection for Spot Fleet.

   If you plan to use the launch template in the launch instance wizard or with the RunInstances API, you must select an instance type.

   • Instance type: Ensure that the instance type is compatible with the AMI that you've specified. For more information, see Instance types.

   • Advanced: To specify instance attributes and let Amazon EC2 identify the instance types with those attributes, choose Advanced, and then choose Specify instance type attributes.

     • Number of vCPUs: Enter the minimum and maximum number of vCPUs for your compute requirements. To indicate no limits, enter a minimum of 0, and leave the maximum blank.

     • Amount of memory (MiB): Enter the minimum and maximum amount of memory, in MiB, for your compute requirements. To indicate no limits, enter a minimum of 0, and leave the maximum blank.

     • Expand Optional instance type attributes and choose Add attribute to express your compute requirements in more detail. For information about each attribute, see InstanceRequirementsRequest in the Amazon EC2 API Reference.

     • Resulting instance types: You can preview the instance types that match the specified attributes. To exclude instance types, choose Add attribute, and from the Attribute list, choose Excluded instance types. From the Attribute value list, select the instance types to exclude.

8. For Key pair (login), provide the following information:

   • Key pair name: The key pair for the instance. For more information, see Amazon EC2 key pairs and Linux instances.

9. For Network settings, provide the following information:

   • Networking platform: If applicable, whether to launch the instance into a VPC or EC2-Classic. If you choose Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), specify the subnet in the Network interfaces section. If you choose EC2-Classic, ensure that the specified instance type is supported in EC2-Classic and specify the Availability Zone for the instance. Note that we are retiring EC2-Classic on August 15, 2022.

   • Security groups: One or more security groups to associate with the instance. If you add a network interface to the launch template, omit this setting and specify the security groups as part of the network interface specification. You cannot launch an instance from a launch template that specifies security groups and a network interface. For more information, see Amazon EC2 security groups for Linux instances.

10. For Storage (volumes), specify volumes to attach to the instance besides the volumes specified by the AMI (Volume 1 (AMI Root)). To add a new volume, choose Add new volume.

    • Volume type: The instance store or Amazon EBS volumes with which to associate your instance. The type of volume depends on the instance type that you've chosen. For more information, see Amazon EC2 instance store and Amazon EBS volumes.

    • Device name: A device name for the volume.

    • Snapshot: The ID of the snapshot from which to create the volume.

    • Size (GiB): For Amazon EBS volumes, the storage size.

    • Volume type: For Amazon EBS volumes, the volume type. For more information, see Amazon EBS volume types.

    • IOPS: For the Provisioned IOPS SSD volume type, the number of I/O operations per second (IOPS) that the volume can support.

    • Delete on termination: For Amazon EBS volumes, whether to delete the volume when the instance is terminated. For more information, see Preserve Amazon EBS volumes on instance termination.

    • Encrypted: If the instance type supports EBS encryption, you can enable encryption for the volume. If you have enabled encryption by default in this Region, encryption is enabled for you. For more information, see Amazon EBS encryption.

    • Key: The customer managed key to use for EBS encryption. You can specify the ARN of any customer managed key that you created using the customer managed key. If you specify a customer managed key, you must also use Encrypted to enable encryption.

11. For Resource tags, specify tags by providing key and value combinations. You can tag the instance, the volumes, elastic graphics, Spot Instance requests, and network interfaces.

12. For Network interfaces, you can specify up to two network interfaces for the instance.

    • Device index: The device number for the network interface, for example, eth0 for the primary network interface. If you leave the field blank, AWS creates the primary network interface.

    • Network interface: The ID of the network interface, or leave blank to let AWS create a new network interface.

    • Description: (Optional) A description for the new network interface.

    • Subnet: The subnet in which to create a new network interface. For the primary network interface (eth0), this is the subnet in which the instance is launched. If you've entered an existing network interface for eth0, the instance is launched in the subnet in which the network interface is located.

    • Security groups: One or more security groups in your VPC with which to associate the network interface.

    • Auto-assign public IP: Whether to automatically assign a public IP address to the network interface with the device index of eth0. This setting can only be enabled for a single, new network interface.

    • Primary IP: A private IPv4 address from the range of your subnet. Leave blank to let AWS choose a private IPv4 address for you.

    • Secondary IP: A secondary private IPv4 address from the range of your subnet. Leave blank to let AWS choose one for you.

    • (IPv6-only) IPv6 IPs: An IPv6 address from the range of the subnet.

    • IPv4 Prefixes: The IPv4 prefixes for the network interface.

    • IPv6 Prefixes: The IPv6 prefixes for the network interface.

    • Delete on termination: Whether the network interface is deleted when the instance is deleted.

    • Elastic Fabric Adapter: Indicates whether the network interface is an Elastic Fabric Adapter. For more information, see Elastic Fabric Adapter.

    • Network card index: The index of the network card. The primary network interface must be assigned to network card index 0. Some instance types support multiple network cards.

13. For Advanced details, expand the section to view the fields and specify any additional parameters for the instance.

    • Purchasing option: The purchasing model. Choose Request Spot Instances to request Spot Instances at the Spot price, capped at the On-Demand price, and choose Customize to change the default Spot Instance settings. If you do not request a Spot Instance, EC2 launches an On-Demand Instance by default. For more information, see Spot Instances.

    • IAM instance profile: An AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) instance profile to associate with the instance. For more information, see IAM roles for Amazon EC2.

    • Hostname type: Determines if you want the guest OS hostname of the EC2 instance to be the Resource name (RBN) or IP name (IPBN). For more information, see Amazon EC2 instance hostname types.

    • DNS Hostname: Determines if the DNS queries to the IP name and/or the Resource name will respond with the IPv4 address (A record), IPv6 address (AAAA record), or both. For more information, see Amazon EC2 instance hostname types.

    • Shutdown behavior: Whether the instance should stop or terminate when shut down. For more information, see Change the instance initiated shutdown behavior.

    • Stop - Hibernate behavior: Whether the instance is enabled for hibernation. This field is only valid for instances that meet the hibernation prerequisites. For more information, see Hibernate your On-Demand or Reserved Linux instance.

    • Termination protection: Whether to prevent accidental termination. For more information, see Enable termination protection.

    • Detailed CloudWatch monitoring: Whether to enable detailed monitoring of the instance using Amazon CloudWatch. Additional charges apply. For more information, see Monitor your instances using CloudWatch.

    • Elastic inference: An elastic inference accelerator to attach to your EC2 CPU instance. For more information, see Working with Amazon Elastic Inference in the Amazon Elastic Inference Developer Guide.

    • Credit specification: Whether to enable applications to burst beyond the baseline for as long as needed. This field is only valid for T instances. Additional charges may apply. For more information, see Burstable performance instances.

    • Placement group name: Specify a placement group in which to launch the instance. Not all instance types can be launched in a placement group. For more information, see Placement groups.

    • EBS-optimized instance: Provides additional, dedicated capacity for Amazon EBS I/O. Not all instance types support this feature, and additional charges apply. For more information, see Amazon EBS–optimized instances.

    • Capacity Reservation: Specify whether to launch the instance into any open Capacity Reservation (Open), a specific Capacity Reservation (Target by ID), or a Capacity Reservation group (Target by group). To specify that a Capacity Reservation should not be used, choose None. For more information, see Launch instances into an existing Capacity Reservation.

    • Tenancy: Choose whether to run your instance on shared hardware (Shared), isolated, dedicated hardware (Dedicated), or on a Dedicated Host (Dedicated host). If you choose to launch the instance onto a Dedicated Host, you can specify whether to launch the instance into a host resource group or you can target a specific Dedicated Host. Additional charges may apply. For more information, see Dedicated Instances and Dedicated Hosts.

    • RAM disk ID: (Only valid for paravirtual (PV) AMIs) A RAM disk for the instance. If you have specified a kernel, you may need to specify a specific RAM disk with the drivers to support it.

    • Kernel ID: (Only valid for paravirtual (PV) AMIs) A kernel for the instance.

    • Nitro Enclave: Allows you to create isolated execution environments, called enclaves, from Amazon EC2 instances. For more information, see What is AWS Nitro Enclaves? in the AWS Nitro Enclaves User Guide.

    • License configurations: You can launch instances against the specified license configuration to track your license usage. For more information, see Create a License Configuration in the AWS License Manager User Guide.

    • Metadata accessible: Whether to enable or disable access to the instance metadata. For more information, see Use IMDSv2.

    • Metadata transport: Whether to enable or disable the access method to the instance metadata service that's available for this EC2 instance based on the IP address type (IPv4, IPv6, or IPv4 and IPv6) of the instance. For more information, see Retrieve instance metadata.

    • Metadata version: If you enable access to the instance metadata, you can choose to require the use of Instance Metadata Service Version 2 when requesting instance metadata. For more information, see Configure instance metadata options for new instances.

    • Metadata response hop limit: If you enable instance metadata, you can set the allowable number of network hops for the metadata token. For more information, see Use IMDSv2.

    • User data: You can specify user data to configure an instance during launch, or to run a configuration script. For more information, see Run commands on your Linux instance at launch.

14. Choose Create launch template.

To create a launch template using the AWS CLI

• Use the create-launch-template command. The following example creates a launch template that specifies the following:

  • A tag for the launch template (purpose=production)

  • The instance type (r4.4xlarge) and AMI (ami-8c1be5f6) to launch

  • The number of cores (4) and threads per core (2) for a total of 8 vCPUs (4 cores x 2 threads)

  • The subnet in which to launch the instance (subnet-7b16de0c)

  The template assigns a public IP address and an IPv6 address to the instance and creates a tag for the instance(Name=webserver).

  aws ec2 create-launch-template \
      --launch-template-name TemplateForWebServer \
      --version-description WebVersion1 \
      --tag-specifications 'ResourceType=launch-template,Tags=[{Key=purpose,Value=production}]' \
      --launch-template-data file://template-data.json

  The following is an example template-data.json file.

  {
      "NetworkInterfaces": [{
          "AssociatePublicIpAddress": true,
          "DeviceIndex": 0,
          "Ipv6AddressCount": 1,
          "SubnetId": "subnet-7b16de0c"
      }],
      "ImageId": "ami-8c1be5f6",
      "InstanceType": "r4.4xlarge",
      "TagSpecifications": [{
          "ResourceType": "instance",
          "Tags": [{
              "Key":"Name",
              "Value":"webserver"
          }]
      }],
      "CpuOptions": {
          "CoreCount":4,
          "ThreadsPerCore":2
      }
  }

  The following is example output.

  {
      "LaunchTemplate": {
          "LatestVersionNumber": 1, 
          "LaunchTemplateId": "lt-01238c059e3466abc", 
          "LaunchTemplateName": "TemplateForWebServer", 
          "DefaultVersionNumber": 1, 
          "CreatedBy": "arn:aws:iam::123456789012:root", 
          "CreateTime": "2017-11-27T09:13:24.000Z"
      }
  }

To create a launch template from an instance using the console

1. Open the Amazon EC2 console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/ec2/.

2. In the navigation pane, choose Instances.

3. Select the instance, and choose Actions, Create template from instance.

4. Provide a name, description, and tags, and adjust the launch parameters as required.

   Note

   When you create a launch template from an instance, the instance's network interface IDs and IP addresses are not included in the template.

5. Choose Create launch template.

To get launch template data from an instance using the AWS CLI

• Use the get-launch-template-data command and specify the instance ID. You can use the output as a base to create a new launch template or launch template version. By default, the output includes a top-level LaunchTemplateData object, which cannot be specified in your launch template data. Use the --query option to exclude this object.

  aws ec2 get-launch-template-data \
      --instance-id i-0123d646e8048babc \
      --query "LaunchTemplateData"

  The following is example output.

      {
          "Monitoring": {}, 
          "ImageId": "ami-8c1be5f6", 
          "BlockDeviceMappings": [
              {
                  "DeviceName": "/dev/xvda", 
                  "Ebs": {
                      "DeleteOnTermination": true
                  }
              }
          ], 
          "EbsOptimized": false, 
          "Placement": {
              "Tenancy": "default", 
              "GroupName": "", 
              "AvailabilityZone": "us-east-1a"
          }, 
          "InstanceType": "t2.micro", 
          "NetworkInterfaces": [
              {
                  "Description": "", 
                  "NetworkInterfaceId": "eni-35306abc", 
                  "PrivateIpAddresses": [
                      {
                          "Primary": true, 
                          "PrivateIpAddress": "10.0.0.72"
                      }
                  ], 
                  "SubnetId": "subnet-7b16de0c", 
                  "Groups": [
                      "sg-7c227019"
                  ], 
                  "Ipv6Addresses": [
                      {
                          "Ipv6Address": "2001:db8:1234:1a00::123"
                      }
                  ], 
                  "PrivateIpAddress": "10.0.0.72"
              }
          ]
      }

  You can write the output directly to a file, for example:

  aws ec2 get-launch-template-data \
      --instance-id i-0123d646e8048babc \
      --query "LaunchTemplateData" >> instance-data.json

To create a launch template version using the console

1. Open the Amazon EC2 console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/ec2/.

2. In the navigation pane, choose Launch Templates.

3. Select a launch template, and then choose Actions, Modify template (Create new version).

4. For Template version description, enter a description for this version of the launch template.

5. (Optional) Expand Source template and select a version of the launch template to use as a base for the new launch template version. The new launch template version inherits the launch parameters from this launch template version.

6. Modify the launch parameters as required, and choose Create launch template.

To create a launch template version using the AWS CLI

• Use the create-launch-template-version command. You can specify a source version on which to base the new version. The new version inherits the launch parameters from this version, and you can override parameters using --launch-template-data. The following example creates a new version based on version 1 of the launch template and specifies a different AMI ID.

  aws ec2 create-launch-template-version \
      --launch-template-id lt-0abcd290751193123 \
      --version-description WebVersion2 \
      --source-version 1 \
      --launch-template-data "ImageId=ami-c998b6b2"

To set the default launch template version using the console

1. Open the Amazon EC2 console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/ec2/.

2. In the navigation pane, choose Launch Templates.

3. Select the launch template and choose Actions, Set default version.

4. For Template version, select the version number to set as the default version and choose Set as default version.

To set the default launch template version using the AWS CLI

• Use the modify-launch-template command and specify the version that you want to set as the default.

  aws ec2 modify-launch-template \
      --launch-template-id lt-0abcd290751193123 \
      --default-version 2

To describe a launch template version using the console

1. Open the Amazon EC2 console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/ec2/.

2. In the navigation pane, choose Launch Templates.

3. You can view a version of a specific launch template, or get a list of the launch templates whose latest or default version matches a specific version number.

   • To view a version of a launch template: Select the launch template. On the Versions tab, from Version, select a version to view its details.

   • To get a list of all the launch templates whose latest version matches a specific version number: From the search bar, choose Latest version, and then choose a version number.

   • To get a list of all the launch templates whose default version matches a specific version number: From the search bar, choose Default version, and then choose a version number.

To describe a launch template version using the AWS CLI

• Use the describe-launch-template-versions command and specify the version numbers. In the following example, versions 1 and 3 are specified.

  aws ec2 describe-launch-template-versions \
      --launch-template-id lt-0abcd290751193123 \
      --versions 1 3

To describe all the latest and default launch template versions in your account using the AWS CLI

• Use the describe-launch-template-versions command and specify $Latest, $Default, or both. You must omit the launch template ID and name in the call. You cannot specify version numbers.

  aws ec2 describe-launch-template-versions \
      --versions "$Latest,$Default"

To delete a launch template version using the console

1. Open the Amazon EC2 console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/ec2/.

2. In the navigation pane, choose Launch Templates.

3. Select the launch template and choose Actions, Delete template version.

4. Select the version to delete and choose Delete.

To delete a launch template version using the AWS CLI

• Use the delete-launch-template-versions command and specify the version numbers to delete.

  aws ec2 delete-launch-template-versions \
      --launch-template-id lt-0abcd290751193123 \
      --versions 1

To launch an instance from a launch template using the console

1. Open the Amazon EC2 console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/ec2/.

2. In the navigation pane, choose Launch Templates.

3. Select the launch template and choose Actions, Launch instance from template.

4. For Source template version, select the launch template version to use.

5. For Number of instances, specify the number of instances to launch.

6. (Optional) You can override or add launch template parameters by changing and adding parameters in the Instance details section.

7. Choose Launch instance from template.

To delete a launch template (console)

1. Open the Amazon EC2 console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/ec2/.

2. In the navigation pane, choose Launch Templates.

3. Select the launch template and choose Actions, Delete template.

4. Enter Delete to confirm deletion, and then choose Delete.

To delete a launch template (AWS CLI)

• Use the delete-launch-template (AWS CLI) command and specify the launch template.

  aws ec2 delete-launch-template --launch-template-id lt-01238c059e3466abc