How do I view the progress of a newly created custom AMI for an EC2 instance that's stuck in a Pending state?

Short description

Your custom AMI creation time depends on the number of Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) volumes attached to an Amazon EC2 instance. An AMI that's in a Pending state indicates that the associated snapshots are still in the creation process.

Slow snapshot creation in an AMI might occur for the following reasons:

• Design and infrastructure factors such as size of volume and last snapshot taken.
• I/O operations that are concurring on the volume when the creation call is initiated. If this occurs, then snapshots are deprioritized.
• Snapshots that are created during AMI creation. It's more efficient to create snapshot before you create your AMI.
• Other data is in use or at work during snapshot creation. Minimize this situation to allow for faster snapshot creation.

Resolution

To view the progress of your AMI creation, complete the following steps:

1. Open the Amazon EC2 console.
2. Navigate to the Snapshot section and filter snapshots by Description. Make sure to use the AMI ID.

If your snapshots indicate Unavailable (99%), then there are still snapshots in creation. This is normal behavior. Snapshots indicate Available (100%) when all other snapshots reach 99%.

Note: For data integrity purposes, it's a best practice to stop your instance before you create your AMI.

Related information

Create a custom Windows AMI

Create Amazon EBS snapshots