where will be stored our AWS Custom AMI?

Question

we can take the back up of server which is running in AWS. that is called AMI. How AWS handles our custom AMI ? where it will be stored ? can we access the Custom AMI Location ? I searched lot but could not get the answer. please let me know if there is any documentation about Custom AMI location. if it stored in S3 buckets can we see it ? or otherwise how can we know about out custom AMI.

Answer 1

An Amazon Machine Image (AMI) is stored in Amazon S3, but it is not directly accessible. Instead, you must use API calls or the Management Console to use an AMI.

The reality is that an AMI might actually contain content from other AMIs -- for example, if you launch an instance from a standard AWS-provided AMI, then add one file and create a new AMI, only the blocks that your instance changed would be stored -- the remaining (unchanged) blocks simply point to the original AMI content. This means that AMIs can often be quite small and you will not pay the cost of storing the complete disk. All of this is invisible to users.

You can see your 'custom' AMI in the AMIs section of the management console, or via the describe_images API call.