We are excited to announce the immediate availability of a new feature: Amazon Machine Image (AMI) Copy. AMI Copy enables you to easily copy your AMIs across AWS regions, enabling the following scenarios:

Consistent and Simple Multi-Region Deployment - You can copy an AMI from one region to another, enabling you to easily launch consistent instances based on the same AMI into different regions.

Scalability - You can more easily design and build world-scale applications that meet the needs of your users, regardless of their location.

Performance - You can increase performance by distributing your application and locating critical components of your application in closer proximity to your users. You can also take advantage of region-specific features such as instance types or other AWS services.

Even Higher Availability - You can design and deploy applications across AWS regions, to increase availability.

To use AMI Copy, simply select the AMI to be copied from within the AWS Management Console, choose the destination region, and start the copy. AMI Copy can also be accessed via the EC2 Command Line Interface or EC2 API as described in the EC2 User’s Guide. Once the copy is complete, the new AMI can be used to launch new EC2 instances in the destination region.

There are no additional charges for using AMI Copy, but you will be charged to transfer the AMI out of the source region and to store the copied AMI in the destination region.

We recently launched Amazon EBS Snapshot Copy, which enables you to copy EBS Snapshots across AWS regions, and last month we significantly lowered the cost of transferring data between AWS Regions (by 26% to 83%). Together with AMI Copy we hope that these updates make it easier for you to take advantage of the AWS global footprint.