Every new web server in a fleet needs the same operating system hardening, monitoring agent and application runtime. Today an engineer launches a plain Amazon Linux instance and runs a 40-minute setup script by hand, and no two servers end up quite alike. They want a new server ready in about a minute, identical to its siblings. What should they do?
AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner (CLF-C02), objective 3. Cloud technology and services medium
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The options
Correct Configure one instance carefully, create a custom AMI from it, and launch every new server from that AMI
Correct. An AMI captures the operating system, the configuration and the installed software as a launchable image, so every instance created from it starts in the same state, in the time it takes to boot.
Not correct Take an EBS snapshot of the configured instance's root volume and attach it to each new instance
Wrong, and it is close enough to be tempting. A snapshot is a point-in-time copy of a volume's data. An AMI is what you actually launch — it references snapshots but also carries the launch metadata AWS needs. You would still have to create an AMI from that snapshot.
Not correct Move the 40-minute script into the instance's user data so it runs automatically at first boot
Wrong for the stated goal, though it is genuinely useful. User data automates the work but still spends the 40 minutes at every launch, and it can still fail differently — a package mirror times out and that server is subtly different again.
Not correct Launch a larger instance type so the setup script completes faster
Wrong. It might shave a few minutes off, at a higher price, and it does nothing about the servers not being identical, which is the more expensive half of the problem.
Why
Three things get confused constantly. An AMI is a launchable image: operating system, configuration and software, baked once and used many times. User data is a script the instance runs at first boot, best used for the last-mile settings that differ per environment. An EBS snapshot is a point-in-time copy of a volume's data, used for backup and for building AMIs. The usual production pattern is to bake an AMI and keep user data short.
Where this comes from
- Cited
- AWS exam guide task statement 3.3
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