How do I resize my EC2 Windows instance or change the EC2 Windows instance type?

Short description

With Amazon EC2, you can modify your EC2 resources to meet your use case requirements. To get more compute resources, change your EC2 instance type to the next viable option.

You can change instance types to accomplish any of the following tasks:

• Increase or decrease the number of CPU cores.
• Increase or decrease the amount of RAM.
• Allow Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) optimization.
• Allow enhanced networking.
• Change GPU cores.

Resolution

To resize your EC2 instance, choose an instance type that meets your CPU, RAM, and feature requirements.

Before you resize your EC2 Windows instance, review the following points:

• If you launch instances from Amazon Machine Images (AMIs), then install the required drivers for the destination instance type. You must install the required drivers for custom Windows AMIs and Amazon-provided Windows AMIs created before August 2018. If the instance doesn't have the required drivers, then status checks fail.
• For instances created from AMIs after August 2018, install or upgrade the required drivers for the destination instance type.
• Verify that your current instance type is compatible with the new instance type that you choose.
• If the current instance has an instance store volume, then any data on the instance store volume is lost when the instance is stopped. Before you stop the instance, back up the data on your instance.
• If you don't use an Elastic IP address, then the public IP address is released when you stop the instance.
• It's a best practice to maintain backups of your instances and data. Create an AMI or create snapshots of your Amazon EBS volumes before you change the instance type.
• If your instance is part of an Auto Scaling group, then change the launch configuration to launch the new instance type. On the Copy Launch Configuration page, choose the new instance type.

To resize your EC2 instance, first choose the target instance type. Then, see Change the instance type for your Amazon EC2 instance.

Related information

Status checks for Amazon EC2 instances

Troubleshoot Amazon EC2 instance launch issues

How do I move my EC2 instance to another subnet, Availability Zone, or VPC?

Create a launch configuration

Amazon EC2 Dedicated Hosts