Change the instance type for your Amazon EC2 instance - Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud

Change the instance type for your Amazon EC2 instance

Use the following instructions to change the instance type of an Amazon EBS-backed instance if the instance type that you need is compatible with the current configuration of your instance. For more information, see Compatibility for changing the instance type.

Considerations

  • You must stop your instance before you can change its instance type. Ensure that you plan for downtime while your instance is stopped. Stopping the instance and changing its instance type might take a few minutes, and restarting your instance might take a variable amount of time depending on your application's startup scripts. For more information, see Stop and start Amazon EC2 instances.

  • When you stop and start an instance, we move the instance to new hardware. If your instance has a public IPv4 address, that is not an Elastic IP, we release the address and give your instance a new public IPv4 address. For more information on IP address behavior throughout the lifecycle of an instance, see Differences between instance states.

  • You can't change the instance type of a Spot Instance.

  • [Windows instances] We recommend that you update the AWS PV driver package before changing the instance type. For more information, see Upgrade PV drivers on EC2 Windows instances.

  • If your instance is in an Auto Scaling group, the Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling service marks the stopped instance as unhealthy, and might terminate it and launch a replacement instance. To prevent this, you can suspend the scaling processes for the group while you're changing the instance type. For more information, see Suspending and resuming a process for an Auto Scaling group in the Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling User Guide.

  • When you change the instance type of an instance with NVMe instance store volumes, the updated instance might have additional instance store volumes, because all NVMe instance store volumes are available even if they are not specified in the AMI or instance block device mapping. Otherwise, the updated instance has the same number of instance store volumes that you specified when you launched the original instance.

  • The maximum number of Amazon EBS volumes that you can attach to an instance depends on the instance type and instance size. You can't change to an instance type or instance size that does not support the number of volumes that are already attached to your instance. For more information, see Amazon EBS volume limits for Amazon EC2 instances.

  • [Linux instances] You can use the AWSSupport-MigrateXenToNitroLinux runbook to migrate compatible Linux instances from a Xen instance type to a Nitro instance type. For more information, see AWSSupport-MigrateXenToNitroLinux runbook in the AWS Systems Manager Automation runbook reference.

  • [Windows instances] For additional guidance on migrating compatible Windows instances from a Xen instance type to a Nitro instance type, see Migrate to latest generation instance types.

To change the instance type of an Amazon EBS-backed instance

  1. (Optional) If the new instance type requires drivers that are not installed on the existing instance, you must connect to your instance and install the drivers first. For more information, see Compatibility for changing the instance type.

  2. [Windows instances] If you configured your Windows instance to use static IP addressing and you change from an instance type that doesn't support enhanced networking to an instance type that does support enhanced networking, you might get a warning about a potential IP address conflict when you reconfigure static IP addressing. To prevent this, enable DHCP on the network interface for your instance before you change the instance type. From your instance, open the Network and Sharing Center, open Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4) Properties for the network interface, and choose Obtain an IP address automatically. Change the instance type and reconfigure static IP addressing on the network interface.

  3. Open the Amazon EC2 console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/ec2/.

  4. In the navigation pane, choose Instances.

  5. Select the instance and choose Instance state, Stop instance. When prompted for confirmation, choose Stop. It can take a few minutes for the instance to stop.

  6. With the instance still selected, choose Actions, Instance settings, Change instance type. This option is grayed out if the instance state is not stopped.

  7. On the Change instance type page, do the following:

    1. For Instance type, select the instance type that you want.

      If the instance type is not in the list, then it's not compatible with the configuration of your instance. Instead, use the following instructions: Migrate to a new instance type by launching a new EC2 instance.

    2. (Optional) If the instance type that you selected supports EBS optimization, select EBS-optimized to enable EBS optimization, or deselect EBS-optimized to disable EBS optimization.

      If the instance type that you selected is EBS optimized by default, EBS-optimized is selected and you can't deselect it.

    3. (Optional) Configure vCPU options on the new instance type.

      Changing the instance type resets CPU options to None. This option uses default vCPUs for the new instance type.

      If the instance type that you selected supports vCPU configuration, select Specify CPU options in the Advanced details panel to configure vCPUs for your new instance type.

    4. Choose Change to accept the new settings.

  8. To start the instance, select the instance and choose Instance state, Start instance. It can take a few minutes for the instance to enter the running state. If your instance won't start, see Troubleshoot changing the instance type.

  9. [Windows instances] If your instance runs Windows Server 2016 or Windows Server 2019 with EC2Launch v1, connect to your Windows instance and run the following EC2Launch PowerShell script to configure the instance after the instance type is changed.

    Important

    The administrator password will reset when you enable the initialize instance EC2 Launch script. You can modify the configuration file to disable the administrator password reset by specifying it in the settings for the initialization tasks. For steps on how to disable password reset, see Configure initialization tasks (EC2Launch) or Change settings (EC2Launch v2).

    PS C:\> C:\ProgramData\Amazon\EC2-Windows\Launch\Scripts\InitializeInstance.ps1 -Schedule