Version 5 (V5) of the AWS Tools for PowerShell has been released\$1

For information about breaking changes and migrating your applications, see the [migration topic](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/powershell/v5/userguide/migrating-v5.html).

 [https://docs.aws.amazon.com/powershell/v5/userguide/migrating-v5.html](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/powershell/v5/userguide/migrating-v5.html)

# Find an Amazon Machine Image Using Windows PowerShell
<a name="pstools-ec2-get-amis"></a>

When you launch an Amazon EC2 instance, you specify an Amazon Machine Image (AMI) to serve as a template for the instance. However, the IDs for the AWS Windows AMIs change frequently because AWS provides new AMIs with the latest updates and security enhancements. You can use the [Get-EC2Image](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/powershell/v5/reference/items/Get-EC2Image.html) cmdlet to find the current Windows AMIs and get their IDs.

## Get-EC2Image
<a name="pstools-ec2-get-image"></a>

The `Get-EC2Image` cmdlet retrieves a list of AMIs that you can use.

Use the `-Owner` parameter with the array value `amazon, self` so that `Get-EC2Image` retrieves only AMIs that belong to Amazon or to you. In this context, *you* refers to the user whose credentials you used to invoke the cmdlet.

```
PS > Get-EC2Image -Owner amazon, self
```

You can scope the results using the `-Filter` parameter. To specify the filter, create an object of type `Amazon.EC2.Model.Filter`. For example, use the following filter to display only Windows AMIs.

```
$platform_values = New-Object 'collections.generic.list[string]'
$platform_values.add("windows")
$filter_platform = New-Object Amazon.EC2.Model.Filter -Property @{Name = "platform"; Values = $platform_values}
Get-EC2Image -Owner amazon, self -Filter $filter_platform
```

The following is an example of one of the AMIs returned by the cmdlet; the actual output of the previous command provides information for many AMIs.

```
Architecture        : x86_64
BlockDeviceMappings : {/dev/sda1, xvdca, xvdcb, xvdcc…}
CreationDate        : 2019-06-12T10:41:31.000Z
Description         : Microsoft Windows Server 2019 Full Locale English with SQL Web 2017 AMI provided by Amazon
EnaSupport          : True
Hypervisor          : xen
ImageId             : ami-000226b77608d973b
ImageLocation       : amazon/Windows_Server-2019-English-Full-SQL_2017_Web-2019.06.12
ImageOwnerAlias     : amazon
ImageType           : machine
KernelId            : 
Name                : Windows_Server-2019-English-Full-SQL_2017_Web-2019.06.12
OwnerId             : 801119661308
Platform            : Windows
ProductCodes        : {}
Public              : True
RamdiskId           : 
RootDeviceName      : /dev/sda1
RootDeviceType      : ebs
SriovNetSupport     : simple
State               : available
StateReason         : 
Tags                : {}
VirtualizationType  : hvm
```

**Note**  
Version 4 of the AWS Tools for PowerShell provided the `Get-EC2ImageByName` cmdlet to filter the list of AMIs by name patterns. For version 5 of the tools, use the [Get-SSMLatestEC2Image](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/powershell/v5/reference/items/Get-SSMLatestEC2Image.html) cmdlet instead.