Rebuild a WorkSpace in WorkSpaces Personal - Amazon WorkSpaces

Rebuild a WorkSpace in WorkSpaces Personal

Rebuilding a WorkSpace recreates the root volume of the most recent image of the bundle that the WorkSpace was launched from, its user volume, and its primary elastic network interface. Rebuilding a WorkSpace deletes more data than restoring a WorkSpace, but it only requires you to have a snapshot of the user volume. To restore a WorkSpace, see Restore a WorkSpace in WorkSpaces Personal.

Rebuilding a WorkSpace causes the following to occur:

  • The root volume (for Microsoft Windows, drive C; for Linux, /) is refreshed with the most recent image of the bundle that the WorkSpace was created from. Any applications that were installed, or system settings that were changed after the WorkSpace was created, are lost.

  • The user volume (for Microsoft Windows, the D drive; for Linux, /home) is recreated from the most recent snapshot. The current contents of the user volume are overwritten.

    Automatic snapshots for use when rebuilding a WorkSpace are scheduled every 12 hours. These snapshots of the user volume are taken regardless of the health of the WorkSpace. When you choose Actions, Rebuild / Restore WorkSpace, the date and time of the most recent snapshot is shown.

    When you rebuild a WorkSpace, new snapshots are also taken soon after the rebuild is finished (often within 30 minutes).

  • The primary elastic network interface is recreated. The WorkSpace receives a new private IP address.

Important

After January 14, 2020, WorkSpaces created from a public Windows 7 bundle can no longer be rebuilt. You might want to consider migrating your Windows 7 WorkSpaces to Windows 10. For more information, see Migrate a WorkSpace in WorkSpaces Personal.

You can rebuild a WorkSpace only if the following conditions are met:

  • The WorkSpace must have a state of AVAILABLE, ERROR, UNHEALTHY, STOPPED, or REBOOTING. To rebuild a WorkSpace in the REBOOTING state, you must use the RebuildWorkspaces API operation or the rebuild-workspaces AWS CLI command.

  • A snapshot of the user volume must exist.

To rebuild a WorkSpace
Warning

To rebuild an encrypted WorkSpace, first make sure that the AWS KMS Key is enabled; otherwise, the WorkSpace becomes unusable. To determine whether a KMS Key is enabled, see Displaying KMS Key Details in the AWS Key Management Service Developer Guide.

  1. Open the WorkSpaces console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/workspaces/.

  2. In the navigation pane, choose WorkSpaces.

  3. Select the WorkSpace to rebuild and choose Actions, Rebuild / Restore WorkSpace.

  4. Under Snapshot, select the snapshot's time stamp.

  5. Choose Rebuild.

To rebuild a WorkSpace using the AWS CLI

Use the rebuild-workspaces command.

Troubleshooting

If you rebuild a WorkSpace after changing the user's sAMAccountName user naming attribute in Active Directory, you might receive the following error message:

"ErrorCode": "InvalidUserConfiguration.Workspace"
"ErrorMessage": "The user was either not found or is misconfigured."

To work around this issue, either revert to the original user naming attribute and then re-initiate the rebuild, or create a new WorkSpace for that user.

Rebuild Microsoft Entra ID-joined WorkSpaces

When a user logs in to their WorkSpace for the first time after rebuilding, they need to go through the out-of-box experience (OOBE) again, similar to when they were assigned a new WorkSpace. As a result, a new user profile folder is created on the WorkSpace, overriding the original user profile folder. Hence, during the rebuild of an Entra joined WorkSpace, the content from the original user profile folder is saved under D:\Users\<USERNAME%MMddyyTHHmmss%.NotMigrated> on the rebuilt WorkSpace. The user needs to copy the original profile content from D:\Users\<USERNAME%MMddyyTHHmmss%.NotMigrated> to the user's profile folder at D:\Users\<USERNAME> to restore all user profile data including desktop icons, shortcuts, and data files.

Note

For Microsoft Entra ID-joined WorkSpaces, we recommend to always use Restore WorkSpaces, when possible, instead of Rebuild WorkSpaces.