BYOL with imported EC2 Windows AMI

Question

A customer is planning to import their existing on-prem Windows server image to AWS using VM Import. They would also like to use their existing Windows Server license to use with the imported image. Our documentation says that for the  VM imported image, AWS will provide the appropriate Windows server license key. Customer is asking if there is anyway to use their own license with imported windows AMI.

Below is what our VM Import documentation says about imported Windows images
https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/vm-import/

"In general, when you import your Microsoft Windows VM images into Amazon EC2, AWS will provide the appropriate Microsoft Windows Server license key for your imported instance. Hourly EC2 instance charges cover the Microsoft Windows Server software and underlying hardware resources. Your on-premise Microsoft Windows Server license key will not be used by EC2 and you are free to reuse it for other Microsoft Windows VM images within your on-premise environment."

Accepted Answer

Yes, customer can use their license key. BUT If customer is using their own key, it becomes BYOL and they need to use dedicated host (not shared tenancy) and also have to set BYOL=yes in the part of the VM Import process.

They cannot use their own key if they are renting the license from us in a License Included (LI) model.

Answer

As of Nov 2021 AWS now offers the ability to easily switch between AWS provided licenses and bring your own licenses (BYOL) for Windows Server and SQL Server workloads using AWS License Manager.

https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2021/11/aws-switch-license-windows-sql-server-ec2/
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/license-manager/latest/userguide/license-conversion.html

BYOL with imported EC2 Windows AMI

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