AWS EC2 - what is the difference between Amazon Linux AMIs

13
votes

When launching a new EC2 instance, I can select between 2 different Amazon Linux images:

  1. Amazon Linux 2 AMI (HVM), SSD Volume Type
  2. Amazon Linux AMI 2018.03.0 (HVM), SSD Volume Type

What is the difference?

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2
amazon-web-servicesamazon-ec2
AWS has extensive documentaion on this. aws.amazon.com/amazon-linux-2 - John Hanley

2 Answers

2
votes

The first option is your image is a more stripped down/bare bones Linux image while the second includes commonly used packages/tools that are used when creating hosted services (such as AWS command line tools and Ruby).

I have an Amazon Linux 2 AMI (HVM), SSD Volume Type and you can see that extra packages like java and ruby are not installed.

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0
votes

The primary differences between Amazon Linux 2 and Amazon Linux AMI are:

  1. Amazon Linux 2 offers long-term support until June 30, 2023.
  2. Amazon Linux 2 is available as virtual machine images for on-premises development and testing.
  3. Amazon Linux 2 provides the systemd service and systems manager as opposed to System V init system in Amazon Linux AMI.
  4. Amazon Linux 2 comes with an updated Linux kernel, C library, compiler, and tools.
  5. Amazon Linux 2 provides the ability to install additional software packages through the extras mechanism.

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