Questions about AL1 depreciation

Question

My system got a notification that we have several systems that are still using AL1. The information however is vague on how to determine other than the 4 systems listed, which systems may have AMIs that use the AL1 ami as a base. Is there any way to determine the full scope, as these 4 systems have had images made of them that we've used in other areas. Is there a way to tell if the AL1 base is used in our saved images?

Secondly is creating a new server and building images off that for our environment the only way to get through this? I'm hoping the answer to question 1 tells me there's an easy way to find our servers not using AL1 that we could just replicate and use, but I'm just trying to anticipate the scope of the project to upgrade. 
Thanks for any assistance.

Answer

Hello.

> Is there a way to tell if the AL1 base is used in our saved images?

You may be able to identify it by checking "/etc/system-release" or by the AMI name of the EC2 instance.  
If EC2 is managed by Systems Manager, you can check the version using Systems Manager inventory.  
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/amazon-linux-ami-basics.html  
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/systems-manager/latest/userguide/systems-manager-inventory.html

> Secondly is creating a new server and building images off that for our environment the only way to get through this?

Yes, you need to start a new EC2 and migrate.  
https://aws.amazon.com/amazon-linux-2/faqs/?nc1=h_ls  
> Q. Can I perform an in-place upgrade from an existing version of Amazon Linux AMI to Amazon Linux 2?  
> No, an in-place upgrade from the existing Amazon Linux image to Amazon Linux 2 is not supported. We recommend that you test your application on a fresh installation of Amazon Linux 2 first before migrating.

> Q. Can I perform a rolling upgrade on instances running Amazon Linux AMI to Amazon Linux 2?  
> No, your instances running Amazon Linux will not be upgraded to Amazon Linux 2 with rolling upgrade mechanisms. Therefore, there is no disruption to your existing applications. Refer to [Amazon Linux documentation](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/amazon-linux-ami-basics.html) and migration tooling for more details.

Questions about AL1 depreciation

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