I am very new to AWS. I had a perfectly running Windows Server EC2 on t2.micro. IIS is working perfectly and I can get its HTML using a web browser. I can RDP into it.
I then stopped it, created a snapshot from its only EBS volume.
I then created an AMI from the snapshot.
I then launched the AMI. What is interesting is t2.micro is not available. Only t1.micro and m3.medium onward are available. When I tried to launch, it warns me that port 22 is not turned on so I can't remote into it. The instance status check says "insufficient data". When I clicked the "Connect" button, it asks me to use putty. So it seems to think that the instance is a Linux instance. But I have redone this whole process five times and under no circumstance I ever chose Linux.
If I skip the snapshot, and directly create an AMI from the EC2 instance and launch it, t2.micro is available, and the new instance works.
Why can't I create an AMI from snapshot, if AWS provides such functionality?
Snapshot is a backup of your data.
AMI is snapshot of your system.It contains the bootable information like the architecture, kernel, block device mappings ,instance type etc. , so that it will have some information prior to instance launch.