single AZ or multi-AZ?

Hi,
Your AMIs are already spread across three AZs in your region upon creation. When you select an EC2 instance, and select 'Image->Create Image' and specify the Image Name, and then click "Create Image" button. Then, that Image becomes available in the "IMAGES->AMIs". This AMI is a snapshot of your EC2 instance. (as opposed to an EBS snapshot). This AMI snapshot is stored in a "special" S3 bucket. By default S3 buckets store data across a minimum of 3 AZs in an S3 Region.

Hope this helps.
-randy

clear feedback randy - many thanks.

for a region like us-west, there are only 2 AZs, Oregon and Northern Cal.
if both AZs are unresponsive then we can consider the AMIs gone. correct?

would be nice if aws came up with a virtual/geoless region :)
the "i don't care where it is but aws knows where to find it when i need it" region.

Actually, Oregon and Northern Cal are two separate regions.
o Oregon (us-west-2) has 4 Availability Zones
o Northern Cal (us-west-1) has 2 Availability Zones
So, yes, if the Big One on the San Andreas fault finally causes California to disappear... Your AMIs in region us-west-1 with 2 Availability Zones might disappear for good :-)
If that is a major concern, it is very easy to just select the AMI image and copy it to a different Destination region for backup.

-randy

