Amazon EC2 announces AMI Usage to better monitor the use of AMIs

Amazon EC2 introduces AMI Usage, providing new capabilities that allow you to track AMI consumption across AWS accounts and identify resources in your account that are dependent on particular AMIs. This enhanced visibility helps you monitor AMI utilization patterns across your AWS infrastructure and safely manage AMI deregistrations.

Up until today, you had to write custom scripts to track the use of AMIs across accounts and resources, leading to operational overhead. Now, with AMI Usage, you can generate a report that lists the accounts that are using your AMIs in EC2 instances and launch templates. You can also check utilization of any AMI within your account across multiple resources, including instances, launch templates, Image Builder recipes, and SSM parameters. These new capabilities empower you to maintain clear oversight of AMI usage across your AWS ecosystem, better manage the lifecycle of your AMIs, and optimize costs.

AMI Usage is available to all customers at no additional cost in all AWS regions including AWS China (Beijing) Region, operated by Sinnet, and AWS China (Ningxia) Region, operated by NWCD, and AWS GovCloud (US). To learn more, please visit our documentation.