EC2-IMPORT-INSTANCE(1)

📦 version 1.6.14.1, in ubuntu jammy, ubuntu noble

💖 EC2-IMPORT-INSTANCE(1) — User Commands, bestie edition 💖

okay so this is the manual page for ec2-import-instance, and it lives in the User Commands section, which is giving very "utilities that get stuff DONE" energy. buckle up 🎀

✨ NAME ✨

ec2-import-instance — Create an import instance task to import a virtual machine into EC2

like, it takes your lil VM and yeets it into the cloud 💅

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

 ec2iin ([ec2ii, ec2-import-instance])
 ec2iin [GENERAL OPTIONS] [SPECIFIC OPTIONS] disk-image

yes bestie, it answers to three names: ec2iin, ec2ii, and ec2-import-instance. iconic of it honestly 👑

🫶 GENERAL NOTES 🫶

Any command option/parameter may be passed a value of - to indicate that values for that option should be read from stdin.

(translation: hand it a - and it will read the tea from stdin instead 🍓)

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

Create an import instance task to import a virtual machine into EC2 using meta-data from the given disk image. The volume size for the imported disk-image will be calculated automatically, unless specified.

so it peeks at your disk image, grabs the meta-data, and spins up an import task. the volume size? auto-calculated unless you say otherwise. no cap ✨

💜 GENERAL OPTIONS 💜

  • -O, --aws-access-key KEY — AWS Access Key ID. Defaults to the value of the AWS_ACCESS_KEY environment variable (if set).
  • -W, --aws-secret-key KEY — AWS Secret Access Key. Defaults to the value of the AWS_SECRET_KEY environment variable (if set).
  • -T, --security-token TOKEN — AWS delegation token. Defaults to the value of the AWS_DELEGATION_TOKEN environment variable (if set).
  • -K, --private-key KEY — [DEPRECATED] Specify KEY as the private key to use. Defaults to the value of the EC2_PRIVATE_KEY environment variable (if set). Overrides the default.
  • -C, --cert CERT — [DEPRECATED] Specify CERT as the X509 certificate to use. Defaults to the value of the EC2_CERT environment variable (if set). Overrides the default.
  • -U, --url URL — Specify URL as the web service URL to use. Defaults to the value of https://ec2.amazonaws.com (us-east-1) or to that of the EC2_URL environment variable (if set). Overrides the default.
  • --region REGION — Specify REGION as the web service region to use. This option will override the URL specified by the -U URL option and the EC2_URL environment variable. This option defaults to the region specified by the EC2_URL environment variable or us-east-1 if this environment variable is not set.
  • -D, --auth-dry-run — Check if you can perform the requested action rather than actually performing it.
  • -v, --verbose — Verbose output.
  • -?, --help — Display this help.
  • -H, --headers — Display column headers.
  • --debug — Display additional debugging information.
  • --show-empty-fields — Indicate empty fields.
  • --hide-tags — Do not display tags for tagged resources.
  • --connection-timeout TIMEOUT — Specify a connection timeout TIMEOUT (in seconds).
  • --request-timeout TIMEOUT — Specify a request timeout TIMEOUT (in seconds).

💅 SPECIFIC OPTIONS 💅

  • -t, --instance-type INSTANCETYPE — Specifies the type of instance to be launched. Refer to the latest Developer's Guide for valid values. Defaults to m1.small if not supplied.
  • -g, --group GROUP [--group GROUP...] — Specifies the security group (or groups if specified multiple times) within which the instance(s) should be run. Determines the ingress firewall rules that will be applied to the launched instances. Defaults to the user's default group if not supplied.
  • -f, --format FORMAT — The file format of the disk image. Refer to the latest Developer's Guide for valid values. [REQUIRED]
  • -a, --architecture ARCHITECTURE — The architecture of the image; (one of i386 or x86_64) Defaults to i386 if --instance-type is not supplied.
  • -p, --platform PLATFORM — Specifies the platform of the virtual machine. See the Developer's Guide to see the supported values. Defaults to Windows.
  • -b, --bucket BUCKET — S3 destination bucket name for the manifest. [REQUIRED, unless the option --manifest-url is specified]
  • -o, --owner-akid OWNERAKID — AWS Access Key Id of the owner of BUCKET.
  • -w, --owner-sak SECRETKEY — AWS Secret Access Key of the owner of BUCKET, used to sign the import-manifest URL. This parameter value is not sent to EC2. [REQUIRED]
  • --prefix PREFIX — Prefix for the manifest-file and disk-image file parts within the S3 bucket. [OPTIONAL]
  • --manifest-url url — Optionally, specify the URL for an existing import-manifest file already uploaded to S3 [OPTIONAL]. This option cannot be specified if --bucket has been specified.
  • -s, --volume-size SIZE — The size of the EBS volume, in GiB (2^30 bytes), that will hold the converted image. If this option is omitted, the required volume size will be computed from the image file. Minimum required boot volume size for EC2 is 4 GiB.
  • -z, --availability-zone ZONE — Specifies the availability zone for the imported virtual machine. Run the ec2-describe-availability-zones command for a list of values, and see the latest Developer's Guide for their meanings.
  • -d, --description DESCRIPTION — An optional, free-form comment that will be returned verbatim during subsequent calls to ec2-describe-conversion-tasks. Maximum length is 240 characters.
  • --user-data USERDATA — Specifies the user data to be made available to this instance.
  • --user-data-file DATA-FILE — Specifies the file containing user data to be made available to this instance.
  • --subnet SUBNET — If you're using Amazon Virtual Private Cloud, this specifies the ID of the subnet you want to launch the instance into.
  • --private-ip-address ip_address — If you're using Amazon Virtual Private Cloud, you can optionally use this parameter to assign the instance a specific available IP address from the subnet.
  • --monitor — Enables monitoring of the specified instance(s).
  • --instance-initiated-shutdown-behavior BEHAVIOR — Indicates what the instance(s) should do if an instance shutdown is issued. The following values are supported:
    • 'stop': indicates that the instance should move into the stopped state and remain available to be restarted.
    • 'terminate': indicates that the instance should move into the terminated state.
  • -x, --expires DAYS — Validity period for the signed S3 URLS that allow EC2 to access the manifest. Defaults to 30 days. [OPTIONAL]
  • --ignore-region-affinity — Ignore the verification check to determine that the bucket's S3 region matches the EC2 region where the conversion-task is created.
  • --user-threads THREADS — Maximum number of threads to concurrently upload the file with. Defaults to 20 threads. [OPTIONAL]
  • --dry-run — Do not create a import task, only validate the disk image.
  • --dont-verify-format — Do not verify the file format. This is dangerous and may result in a failed conversion. USE AT YOUR OWN RISK.
bestie. USE AT YOUR OWN RISK is literally right there in the manual. that is the vibes warning. do not come crying to me 😭
  • --no-upload — Do not upload a disk image to S3. To complete the import task, requires upload using ec2-resume-import.

🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

aaaand that's the whole page, no skips, no shortcuts, every single flag accounted for 🧚✨

this masterpiece was brought to you by the EC2 API command line tools, version 1.6.14.1, api=2014-05-01 — so like, yes, it's giving vintage, and honestly? vintage ate. periodt 💖👑🦋

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