EC2 Windows 2008 VM import Not Working

amazon ec2windows-server-2008

I am trying to upload a Windows 2008 SP2 server image to Amazon EC2, but once the process is complete, I can't connect to it.

  1. I had ops export a VMDK from our
    datacenter.
  2. The image appeared to have a fixed
    IP, so I loaded it in VMWare player
    and enabled DHCP.
  3. I uploaded it following amazon's
    instructions:
    http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/vmimport/
  4. I start the new instance and try to
    RDP to the public DNS; connection
    fails.

My two thoughts are:

  1. Loading it in VMWare player messed
    it up somehow, since the
    instructions say use an ESX image.
  2. The image they made me had the wrong
    network adapter type. The image has
    an Intel(R) PRO/1000 MT adapter
    using the E1G60I32.sys driver.

Best Answer

I have successfully imported a Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise vmware workstation image into EC2 through the following steps:

1) Removed all snapshots in vmware

2) Converted the VM's disk device to IDE via the following steps:

a) add a new disk of IDE type (no file splitting)
b) use Acronis True Image boot image (or any disk cloning tool) to clone the SCSI partition to the IDE partition
c) remove and delete the SCSI volume and vmdk file(s).

3) Removed VMware tools

4) Enabled Remote Desktop Access

5) Converted VM to OVF using OVFTool

6) Created Import instance using EC2-import-instance

7) Uploaded VM using ec2-upload-disk-image

8) Waited until the Instance was converted. Started Instance.

9) Opened up RDP port using the security group's inbound rules.

10) Successfully connected via RDP.

It was a painful process, but it worked. Judging by what you revealed in your question, you may want to look into converting the disk type to IDE and well as streaming your image to OVF format.

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