AWS Marketplace launches automated version archiving for AMI and container products

Today, AWS Marketplace announces the availability of automated archival of old, unused product versions that are no longer available publicly for subscription (restricted). This feature is available for Amazon Machine Image (AMI), AMI with CloudFormation templates, and container products.

With this release, AWS Marketplace is streamlining the version management experience for AWS customers and sellers. With automated version archival, any product version that has already been restricted by a seller for longer than two years will be archived. Archived versions will no longer be available to launch from AWS Marketplace for new customers; however, existing users can continue to use them through launch templates and Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling groups by specifying the AMI ID. Any archived version that has not been used to launch any new instances in the previous 13 months will be deleted. Once an archived version is deleted, it is no longer available to launch for new or existing users.

Now AWS customers see only the latest versions of the products in AWS Marketplace, reducing the risk of using outdated versions. For sellers, it simplifies product management by automatically removing unused older versions.

This capability is enabled for all AMI and container products, and no additional action is needed from sellers. To learn more about this feature, see the AWS Marketplace Seller Guide.