Posted On: Jan 11, 2022

Today AWS announced the ability to launch Microsoft Windows Server instances up to 65% faster on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). Customers can flag any Amazon Machine Image (AMI) running Microsoft Windows Server to launch faster. Once flagged, every instance launched from the AMI will automatically launch faster.

Microsoft Windows Server OS launch times can be a source of costly delays while provisioning resources for mission critical workloads and recovery processes. By launching Microsoft Windows instances faster, the new functionality helps in timely provisioning of instances at scale. Whether you run spikey workloads, need faster system recovery or want to add additional or fail-over capacity, you can now have Microsoft Windows instances for all of these use cases launch faster. IT teams managing cloud environments can provide better service while fulfilling dynamic business needs at lower operational costs.

Customers can flag a Microsoft Windows AMI for faster launching either in the AMI Management section of the Amazon EC2 Console or via API/CLI commands. There is no service charge for flagging AMIs for faster launching. Customers pay only for the underlying AWS resources used to prepare the instances for launching faster from AMIs.

Learn more from the Amazon EC2 Windows documentation section about configuring Microsoft Windows AMIs for faster launching. For more details on getting the best out of Amazon EC2 instances running Microsoft Windows Server OS check out the Windows on AWS page and the guide on AWS Windows AMIs.