Amazon EC2 now reduces visibility of public Amazon Machine Images (AMIs) older than two years
Starting today, all public AMIs will have the deprecation time set to two years after their creation date. This means that public AMIs that are more than two years old will by default be deprecated. Once an AMI is deprecated, it will no longer appear in DescribeImages API calls for users that aren’t the owner of the AMI. Deprecating an AMI only reduces the visibility of the AMI in untargeted searches, but continues to be usable and available to you. Users of a deprecated AMI can continue to launch instances and describe the deprecated AMI using its ID.
Starting today, all public AMIs will have the deprecation time set to two years after their creation date. This means that public AMIs that are more than two years old will by default be deprecated. Once an AMI is deprecated, it will no longer appear in DescribeImages API calls for users that aren’t the owner of the AMI. Deprecating an AMI only reduces the visibility of the AMI in untargeted searches, but continues to be usable and available to you. Users of a deprecated AMI can continue to launch instances and describe the deprecated AMI using its ID.
Previously all AMIs had the same level of visibility on the AMI catalog regardless of how long ago they were created. By deprecating older AMIs from the catalog, it reduces the likelihood of inadvertently launching instances using old images with possibly outdated software.
Deprecation time for all public AMIs will now be set automatically to two years after their creation. Public AMIs already older than two years will be deprecated on July 30, 2022. The deprecation date for existing public AMIs will be backfilled over the next month, starting March 31, 2022. To learn more about viewing and managing the deprecation time for your AMIs, please refer to the documentation here.