Does EC2 support Windows Server Core deployments? — Virtualization review

Does EC2 support Windows Server Core deployments?

Brien shows how to perform core deployments of Windows Server in AWS without having to create your own custom Amazon Machine Image (AMI).

If you’ve ever deployed a Windows instance in Amazon EC2, you know that the instance deploys with a full GUI environment, as shown in Figure 1. This is despite the fact that Microsoft recommends that most Windows Server deployments be configured as Server Core.

Presumably Amazon has a reason to configure Windows Server instances to boot to the Windows desktop, but often a basic server deployment is preferable. At one time, it was possible to convert a Windows Server deployment that had the desktop experience enabled to a Server Core deployment, but Microsoft no longer supports such conversions. Even so, there is a way to perform core deployments of Windows Server in AWS without having to create your own custom Amazon Machine Image (AMI).

Normally, when you create a new EC2 instance, you open the EC2 console, choose the option to create a new instance, and then choose an AMI from the list, as shown in Figure 2. Unfortunately, the default AMIs are not configured for Server Core.

Although none of the listed AMIs support server core deployments, there is a workaround. Rather than using the default AMI list, open AWS Marketplace and search for the phrase “server core”. As an alternative, you can simply Google the phrase “EC2 server core” and AWS Marketplace will be listed among the top results. You can see what it looks like in picture 3.

To deploy a Server Core AMI from AWS Marketplace, click the Continue to Subscribe button, shown in the figure above. In doing so, you will need to click on the Accept Terms button, followed by the Continue to Setup button.

At this point, you will be taken to a screen that allows you to select the configuration options you wish to use. Initially, there aren’t as many options available as when you create an EC2 instance from scratch (more options are made available later in the process). You will need to choose the AMI you want to use from the Execution Option drop-down menu. You will also need to select the software version and your preferred region as shown in Figure 4.

Once you have selected the basic configuration options you want to use, click the Continue button on launch. This will take you to the Launch this software screen, which gives you additional configuration options that are more in line with what you might expect if you were creating an EC2 instance from scratch. This screen lets you choose an instance type and select the VPC and subnet you want to use, among other things. Even so, this screen is still a bit sparse compared to the process normally used to deploy an EC2 instance.

The benefit of deploying a new instance this way is that the process is greatly simplified. You can literally launch a new instance with just a few clicks. Of course, the downside is that you don’t have as much control over the deployment process.

If you need finer control over the deployment, there is a way to launch the instance in the usual way. The Choose an action drop-down list is set to “Launch from website” by default, but you can choose the Launch via EC2 option instead. When you do, a Launch button appears, as shown in Figure 5. Clicking this button takes you into the EC2 interface and allows you to launch an instance in the usual way. The only real difference between this method and manually launching a new instance is that you don’t need to select an AMI, because the Server Core AMI is automatically selected on your behalf.

You can choose to launch the new instance through the EC2 console rather than using simplified deployment.

Using AWS Marketplace images is certainly the easiest option for doing a basic server deployment, but it’s not the only option. If you prefer to avoid the Marketplace, your other option is to create your own custom image using the EC2 Image Builder tool.