Posted On: May 8, 2024
Starting today, you can check when your Amazon Machine Images (AMIs) were last used to launch EC2 instances by simply describing your AMIs, enabling you to efficiently filter and track your active AMIs.
Prior to today, you had to write complex scripts to query which of your AMIs were actively used to launch instances. These scripts became increasingly cumbersome and error prone as the number of AMIs grew. Now, you can easily verify if your AMIs are active - based on when they were used to launch instances - by simply describing those AMIs. You can now easily create advanced filtering scripts through which you can track your active AMIs at-scale and make informed decisions about deprecating, disabling, and deregistering your AMIs.
This capability is available at no additional cost in Amazon Web Services China (Beijing) Region, operated by Sinnet, and Amazon Web Services China (Ningxia) Region, operated by NWCD.
You can view the last launched time for your AMIs via Amazon Web Services Console, Amazon CLI, and API. Learn more by visiting the documentation here.