Article ID: kb00219Last Modified: 19-Oct-2026

Restoring Image-based Backup to Amazon EC2

General Considerations

The AWS VM Import service is used to import computer images to AWS Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2).

VMimport Limitations

  1. First generation (MBR) VMs are fully supported.
  2. Second generation VMs (UEFI/GPT) are supported after conversion.
  3. Server OSs are fully supported when restoring to EC2. Desktop OSs can be restored as AMI only. Read more.
  4. Max number of volumes is 22.
  5. Disk size is limited to 2TiB. (This article mentions 1TB, but the limit has been shifted since then).
  6. IPv6 is not supported.
  7. Restore time heavily depends on the instance type (especially the size of the temporary instance, if one is used).
  8. Refer to this article for other AWS-side limitations.

Prerequisites

  1. Ensure that your VM is compatible with EC2. Check here for details.
  2. Create the VMimport role in your AWS account.

Note that the following connections (IP addresses and ports) associated with the Managed Backup services must be allowed: Enable outgoing HTTPS connections (port 443) to the following IP addresses:

  • 3.216.171.162:443
  • 3.216.236.203:443
  • 3.224.78.127:443
  • 54.243.221.133:443
  • 3.218.116.255:443
  • 52.5.40.159:443
  • 52.20.40.101:443

Changes Applied to a Machine that is Being Restored as EC2/AMI

  1. RDP is enabled.
  2. DHCP is enabled.
  3. Firewall is configured to bypass Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) on port 3389.

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