Amazon EC2 - Create a new EBS backed AMI with custom AMI ID

Question

I have an EBS-backed AMI instance running in EC2. I have customized it and now want to create a new AMI from it. I will doing this at regular intervals, thereby replacing the previous AMIs created.

I followed the instructions at http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/creating-an-ami-ebs.html and everything worked perfectly.

One problem is that whenever, I create a new AMI, it gets a new AMI ID. So, when I make the AMI public whenever, I update the AMI, it's AMI ID changes. Is it possible to create a new AMI with a custom ID we can specify?

One alternative would be modify an existing AMI, so that the AMI ID remains the same. Please confirm if this is possible

Answer 1

Each time you create a new AMI, you will get a new id. There is unfortunately no way around this.

An alternative would be to update some of the AMI at launch, provided that it can be done relatively quickly. That way you wont need to create a new AMI every time something changes.

Answer 2

It is not possible to modify the contents of an AMI once you have created it such that the next time the AMI is used those changes will be present. This includes the root device and any data in EBS snapshots associated with the AMI (since it's not possible to alter the contents of an EBS snapshot, either).