How to create an Amazon harware virtual machine (HVM) AMI from scratch? - amazon-ec2

All the instructions I find online start with an existing AMI, but I would like to create an AMI (Amazon Machine Image) from scratch using HVM (Hardware virtual machine) instead of PV (Paravirtualazation).
I would like to build or create new HVM AMI for montavista linux.
I did not find any existing public AMI available for montavista linux operating system.
SO i need to create new HVM-AMI from scratch. Could you please anyone share the process of creating HVM AMI or point to existing AMI for montavista linux if available.

Related

How to use virtualbox in a Windows 10 azure virtual machine

I've been reading about it, and I don't know if there is anyway of doing it.
I want to create a Virtualbox virtual machine inside another virtual machine I created in azure, and I don't have Hyper-V activated.
My virtual machine doesn't have a BIOS to access and enable it, and I read that not all virtual machines in azure allow nested virtualization.
The virtual machine I have right now is a B1ms standard and what I read is that I need a V3 machine to virtualize a virtual machine inside the azure one. Is that true? I don't want to spend money just creating it and then not beeing able to do it.
Thanks :)
This can be done using Nested virtualization in Azure. And yes you heard it right that not all Azure Virtual Machines in Azure allow this and you would need V3 VMs. Make sure to choose a VM size large enough to support the demands of a guest virtual machine.
For costing, you can either create a trial Azure account that would give you a credit of $200. Or if you have got a Visual studio Pro or Enterprise license, you are eligible for free monthly credits that you can use for exploring Azure.
Although you can use Nested Virtualization it might be better to just convert your VirtualBox images to Azure VHDs. This is relatively straightforward:
vboxmanage clonehd SOMETHING.vdi SOMETHING.vhd --format VHD
Afterwards you can use Azure Storage Explorer (or the CLI) to upload the VHD and use this to deploy a Native Virtual Machine on Azure.

How to change AMI on same instance

I have a free micro instance launched in AWS EC2, I want to change the instance's OS to Cent OS. How would I be able to change the AMI <- (OS Image) of the instance?
Edit (Solved):
Terminated existing instance and launched a new one.
You cannot update the AMI on an existing instance in AWS. The only way to do that is to terminate the current instance and relaunch the instances with the desired the AMI
Background
AMI is a special type of virtual appliance that is used to instantiate (create) a virtual machine within the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud ("EC2") and I always refer to it as .iso image file.
Now I can use an .iso image file of a particular OS say Ubuntu to install it on a partition of my choice and if I want to change the OS on that partition then only way for me to do is by formatting that partition and installing a new OS from its .iso image file.

Own linux image on EC2

I need to install linux from existing VMware VMDK on EC2. For first time I can do this manually, later I will need to do this in automated way.
Could you please help me with link to relevant documentation. Also any tips and experiences are welcome.
Why do I need this?
At my company developers and QA are running our PHP apps on a virtual machine hosted on local machine. We want to move these virtual machines to the cloud, so each developer can easily set up a sandbox in simple web interface.
Amazon does not officially support importing Linux. However, an article from 2008 claims it can be done. If you try this, note this URL as well.
Finally, an AWS employee posted this too:
You can use ec2-import-volume to turn a local disk in a RAW, VMDK or VHD file format into an EBS volume in EC2. This turns a full disk, with MBR, into an EBS disk. If the guest is PV, with the Xen PV drivers installed, you could take a snapshot and create an AMI from that snapshot, inserting the correct AKI.
Follow the instructions of creating your own AMI. Also check out the following articles on EBS volumes: article1, article2. Here's some steps on how to create EBS-backed AMI instance.
You will have to manually create your own images. The ec2 api tools do not support linux/esxi 5 images. I just found out after spending 2 hours on a vmware linux to amazon port.

EC2 AMI snapshot

Is there a way to play an EC2 AMI snapshot locally on a laptop? For example, export the AMI snapshot to VMWare? We have a sales team that need this ability when on the road with no internet connectivity (we currently use VMWare player for this). Thanks.
I believe it is still not possible for an AMI to be exported direct to VMware:
VMWare - Import Amazon EC2 AMI?
However, it is possible to mount the EBS that contains the AMI of interest to a fresh, running instance and then use VMware tools to image it and distribute that to your mobile people: http://communities.vmware.com/thread/188775

Is it possible to install VMWare Server on Amazon's EC2?

We are looking to move all of our systems to a virtualized env.
We will be going with EC2 and it appears that if we can install something like vmware or KVM on EC2 then create VMs as needed it would be the most cost effective solution for us.
Is this possible?
thanks!
EC2 is already a virtualized environment; it uses the Xen virtualization manager, which is an open source equivalent to VMWare server. You can create VMs with EC2, customize them and save them as Amazon Machine Images (AMIs).
See the Amazon documentation for a more comprehensive introduction.

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