AWS will now lets you install Windows 11 on EC2 instances

Amazon Web Services will now allow customers to run Windows 11 on Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instances, the firm has announced.

As explained in an AWS blog post (opens in new tab), the Import/Export function now supports migration of Windows 111 virtual machines, allowing customers to “launch instances using the imported images on EC2 Dedicated Hosts, and EC2 Dedicated Instances”.

As reported by The Register (opens in new tab), AWS Senior Technical Account Manager Andrew Riley has set out a handful of criteria the must be met to import Windows 11 virtual machines to EC2:

• An OVA, VHD/X, VMDK, or XVA file is required
• Users should have a valid Microsoft E3 or E5 license for Windows 11
• S3 storage for the AMI is required

AWS on Windows 11

The AWS blog post (opens in new tab) details that, in order to run a Windows 11 VM in EC2, the default boot mode should be set to Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI). This is a must, because Windows 11 required UEFI-enabled machines.

This is a move that is set to make running Windows’s latest operating system on AWS simpler, but The Register suspects that running DaaS-ware may also make this possible.

On an AWS VM Import/Export page, the company says that “you can import Windows and Linux VMs that use VMware ESX or Workstation, Microsoft Hyper-V, and Citrix Xen virtualization formats”.

Availability is set to extend to “AWS GovCloud (US) and all public AWS Regions” with the sole exception of the Amazon Web Services Asia Pacific (Jakarta) Region.

Earlier this year, we found out that AWS’s share of the IaaS marketplace had fallen, making room for Azure’s growth, as the two tech giants continue to battle for global dominance.