Launch Templates - AWS Elastic Beanstalk
Option settingsCheck for launch configurationLaunch templates

Launch Templates

This topic explains that AWS is phasing out launch configurations and replacing them with launch templates. It explains how Elastic Beanstalk environments and transactions are impacted and how you can prepare your environment for launch templates.

Starting on October 1, 2024, the Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling service will no longer support the creation of launch configurations for new accounts. This change is due to launch configurations being phased out and replaced by launch templates by the Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling service. For more information, see Auto Scaling launch configurations in the Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling User Guide.

The transition to launch templates affects Elastic Beanstalk accounts and environments as follows:

  • Existing environments – Existing environments that were created prior to October 1, 2024 will not be impacted.

  • New accounts – New accounts will temporarily need to set at least one of the options listed in Option settings for launch templates to successfully create a new environment. The Auto Scaling service will only create environments for new accounts using launch templates.

  • Existing accounts – As with new accounts, but only for Regions where the account doesn’t already have an environment, existing accounts will need to follow the same process. For this specific situation, existing accounts will temporarily need to set at least one of the options listed in Option settings for launch templates to successfully create a new environment in the given Region. The Auto Scaling service will only create environments using launch templates in the given Region for the account.

If your attempt to create a new environment is not successful, it could be due to the Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling service restricting your ability to create launch configurations. If the error indicates that the CreateLaunchConfiguration API throws an UnsupportedOperationException, then you must set a configuration option in your environment to direct Elastic Beanstalk to use launch templates instead of launch configurations. For more information, see Option settings for launch templates.

Option settings for launch templates

Select at least one of the option settings in the following list to direct Elastic Beanstalk to create an environment with a launch template. If you already have existing environments based on launch configurations, select at least one of these options to move an already existing environment from a launch configuration to a launch template.

Note

New accounts will need to set at least one the following options in order to successfully create a new environment. If at least one these options is not set, the environment creation will fail.

Important

Once an environment is using launch templates, Elastic Beanstalk will never move it back to launch configurations. This is the case even if any these option settings that prompted the original use of launch templates are removed.

Confirm whether your environment has launch configurations or launch templates

You can confirm if your environment already uses launch templates, or if it's using launch configurations, by inspecting the CloudFormation stack template.

To inspect your environment's CloudFormation stack template

  1. Open the AWS CloudFormation console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/cloudformation.

  2. On the navigation bar at the top of the screen, choose the AWS Region where you created the environment.

  3. On the Stacks page of the CloudFormation console, inspect the Description column.

    Locate and select the stack for the Elastic Beanstalk environment. CloudFormation displays the stack details for the environment.

  4. In Stack details select the Template tab.

    Using your browser's page search, you can search the template text for launchtemplate or launchconfiguration.

For more information, see View stack information in the AWS CloudFormation User Guide.

More about launch templates

To learn more about launch templates, see Auto Scaling launch templates in the Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling User Guide.

To learn more about the AWS transition from launch configurations to launch templates, along with the benefits that launch templates offer, see Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling will no longer add support for new EC2 features to Launch Configurations in the AWS Compute Blog.

Important

You don't need to follow the procedure to transition to launch templates that's referenced in this blog article. To migrate your existing Elastic Beanstalk environment to launch templates, you only need to set one of the options listed in Option settings for launch templates.