The first option is your image is a more stripped down/bare bones Linux image while the second includes commonly used packages/tools that are used when creating hosted services (such as AWS command line tools and Ruby).
I have an Amazon Linux 2 AMI (HVM), SSD Volume Type and you can see that extra packages like java and ruby are not installed.
The first option is your image is a more stripped down/bare bones Linux image while the second includes commonly used packages/tools that are used when creating hosted services (such as AWS command line tools and Ruby).
I have an Amazon Linux 2 AMI (HVM), SSD Volume Type and you can see that extra packages like java and ruby are not installed.
The primary differences between Amazon Linux 2 and Amazon Linux AMI are:
- Amazon Linux 2 offers long-term support until June 30, 2023.
- Amazon Linux 2 is available as virtual machine images for on-premises development and testing.
- Amazon Linux 2 provides the systemd service and systems manager as opposed to System V init system in Amazon Linux AMI.
- Amazon Linux 2 comes with an updated Linux kernel, C library, compiler, and tools.
- Amazon Linux 2 provides the ability to install additional software packages through the extras mechanism.
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Optimized performance
Amazon Linux 2 includes support for the latest Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instance capabilities and is tuned for enhanced performance. It includes packages that help ease integration with other AWS services.
Enhanced developer productivity
Amazon Linux 2 is offered as a virtual machine and container image for on-premises development and testing. Developers can speed up their application development by building, testing, and integrating on the same Linux distribution that is used in their production environment.
Large partner network
Amazon Linux 2 has a rapidly growing community of AWS Partners that includes independent software vendors (ISVs). You can install and run many popular partner applications.
Instead of guessing which version of RHEL a particular distro is based off, just run:
rpm -E %{rhel}
For Amazon Linux 2, this will give you 7.
There's a discussion thread available over on the AWS forums that indicates the officially supported Amazon Linux AMI is not based upon any Linux distribution. Rather, the Amazon Linux AMI is independently maintained image by Amazon.
The difference in that ami-b270a8cf ebs uses magnetic storage for the root volume and ami-f973ab84 gp2 uses General Purpose (SSD) storage for the root volume.
AWS's lack of documentation explaining the actual difference between the two (if there is I'll gladly edit this answer) is a bit surprising so I'm adding my own take to this
TLDR;
If you're planning on switching to a faster SSD root volume at some point in the future but want to use Magnetic for now it would be better to use the gp2 version of the AMI and then change the root volume to SSD sometime later
Some more Explanation
ami-f973ab84 amzn2-ami-hvm-2017.12.0.20180328.1-x86_64-gp2- The recommended root volume type is General Purpose SSD (gp2)ami-b270a8cf amzn2-ami-hvm-2017.12.0.20180328.1-x86_64-ebs- The recommended root volume type is Magnetic
However this isn't set in stone so you can still interchange between them (I've used the gp2 version with a Magnetic storage in the past without issues)
I couldn't find any official documentation as to the actual difference between the two AMI versions but the gp2 version most likely has SSD related optimizations added already to the OS
So if you envision switching to SSD at some point in future but want to start with a Magnetic volume it might be better to just use the gp2 optimized AMI right from the start. It probably has some optimizations not relevant to Magnetic volumes but it might be more future proof in case you want to have a faster root volume later
Given an AMI ID for an existing AMI, I can query the API or command line to find out which OS it is. For example,
aws ec2 describe-images --image-ids $AMI_ID
[...]
"PlatformDetails": "Linux/UNIX"
But for Linux AMIs, is there a way to find out which flavor of Linux it is, without actually launching an instance?
More narrowly, is there a way to find out whether this AMI was built on top of one of the official AWS Amazon Linux 1 or Linux 2 AMIs, and if so, was it AL1 or AL2?
I understand that Amazon Linux AMI comes with a bundle of apps that might be useful for integration with AWS.
Apart from that, is there any reason to choose Amazon Linux over Ubuntu or Debian?
Is Amazon Linux more secure, or faster, lighter, more performant at networking , etc than Ubuntu LTS?