EC2 and Windows 7 - Availble instance types, virtualization and AMI creation.

Question

A customer is looking into running some Windows 7 (Enterprise SP1) instances as potential burst capacity while they migrate to a later supported OS.  Some questions around this that I have not been able to find a definitive answers on :

1. Are there any restrictions on available instance types when running Windows 7 on EC2? (I understand the requirement for dedicated host to support BYOL)

2. In terms of building a suitable AMI I have looked into our migration tools (CloudEndure and SMS). To use these it would appears that their on-premise guests would need to be HVM and not PV. Is this always the case when importing images into EC2?

3. Would a 32bit vs 64bit source guest OS make any difference to any of the above?

4. Would there be a better way for them to build a Windows 7 image based on the installation media they have instead of having to import from on-premise?
 
Thanks for any guidance.

Accepted Answer

Hi,

You can indeed migrate a Windows 7 machine (either 32 or 64 bit) using CloudEndure (and run it on a Dedicated Host).
PV is not relevant for Windows anyway, all Windows versions supported by EC2 only use HVM, so there is nothing to consider here.

Also, Windows 7 can only run on XEN and not Nitro instances.

EC2 and Windows 7 - Availble instance types, virtualization and AMI creation.

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