Overview

As of Feb 2026, Amazon EC2 instances supports nested virtualization on virtual EC2 instances. Nested virtualization can help you to run tools that require processor-level virtualization support such as Docker Desktop, Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 (WSL2), Android Studio emulators, and Hyper-V or KVM hypervisors.

This article provides a short overview of steps involved in launching a Windows Server instance with nested virtualization enabled.

Option 1: Launch a new instance with nested virtualization enabled

Start EC2 Launch wizard from EC2 console

• Select a supported instance type. At time of writing, supported types include C8i, M8i and R8i in commercial Regions
• Expand Advanced details, and for Nested virtualization, choose Enable
• In the Summary panel, review your instance configuration, and then choose Launch instance

Option 2: Configure existing instance to use nested virtualization

Make sure instance is in stopped state

• From EC2 console, select the instance
• Choose Actions, Instance settings, Change CPU options
• On the Change CPU options page, for Nested virtualization, select Enable to turn on nested virtualization
• Review your changes, and then choose Change to apply the new CPU options.

Verify

Login to your Windows Server, and install the desired tools. Below screenshot is Windows Server m8i.2xlarge instance running Hyper-V, Docker Desktop and WSL2. Remote access is with Amazon DCV web browser client.

Information and Considerations

Refer to Use nested virtualization to run hypervisors in Amazon EC2 instances for more information including considerations