I am at a situation that I want to import a VM in AWS as an AMI. The VM is a Windows Server 2012 image.
My question is around the licensing.
I know that the VM itself has no implicit Windows license.
If I use --license-type AWS in my aws ec2 import-image command does it mean that AWS will cover the licensing or do I need to contact Microsoft, purchase a license and use --license-type BYOL?
Yeah, if you import an image with "--license-type AWS", AWS will activate windows by using their KMS every time server booting up, this completed by ec2config service or ec2launch(2016), you can check logs to find how Ec2WindowsActivate plugin works. To change this behavior, please modify config.xml of ec2config.
If you import an image with "--license-type BYOL", AWS ec2config or ec2launch will ignore windows activation which makes you need to have your own licenses.
Also, you can imagine AWS hourly rate gonna be higher than BYOL because AWS is paying licenses.
https://github.com/LarrysGIT/Switch-AWS-AMI-from-BYOL-to-AWS