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You might be aware that aws is changing the resource ids and i have been recieving notification emails about this. I think it is going to go live by next month.

I have a few instances under my account which were created last year and all the sites are live. They are running on the AWS's default linux images. Now i dont use too many services just EC2 for my servers, RDS for my databases, and S3 For my files.

So here are my questions:

  1. How do i find out whether my instances are following the old standard or the new longer ID standard?
  2. How do i change from shorter to longer ID standard? Do i just create a snapshot and boot a new server?
  3. What impact will this new change have on my current instances if i dont do any anything?

Really Appreciate any of the answers. Thanks

omer Farooq
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1 Answers1

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Being connected to AWS Console, looking at EC2 instances list. Or listing your instances using aws-cli, you will see a field Instance ID.

The older IDs would look like i-1234560c. The newer ones would look like i-123456789abcdef01. On your EC2 Dashboard, you'll find a Resource ID length management link on your right (or here). Make sure you picked all checkboxes: next instances you will create will use these longer IDs.

Note that longer IDs only apply to new instances. You can very well keep your existing instances as they are, and keep longer IDs disabled until their usage becomes mandatory.

Update: AWS docs says:

A resource ID takes the form of a resource identifier (such as snap for a snapshot) followed by a hyphen and a unique combination of letters and numbers. Starting in January 2016, we're gradually introducing longer length IDs for some Amazon EC2 and Amazon EBS resource types. The length of the alphanumeric character combination was in an 8-character format; the new IDs are in a 17-character format, for example, i-1234567890abcdef0 for an instance ID.

Supported resource types will have an opt-in period, during which you can enable the longer ID format. After you've enabled longer IDs for a resource type, any new resources that you create are created with a longer ID unless you explicitly disable the longer ID format. A resource ID does not change after it's created; therefore, your existing resources with shorter IDs are not affected. Similarly, if you disable longer IDs for a resource type, any resources that you created with the longer IDs are not affected.

All supported resource types will have a deadline date, after which all new resources of this type default to the longer ID format, and you can no longer disable the longer ID format. You can enable or disable longer IDs per IAM user and IAM role. By default, an IAM user or role defaults to the same settings as the root user.

Depending on when you created your account, supported resource types may default to using longer IDs. However, you can opt out of using longer IDs until the deadline date for that resource type. For more information, see Longer EC2 and EBS Resource IDs in the Amazon EC2 FAQs.

You do not need to switch these yourself.

SYN
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  • So if i dont do anything to the current instances, will they keep running fine forever? – omer Farooq Nov 25 '16 at 00:27
  • I don't remember reading about instances getting terminated for not using these new IDs. I suspect they send these mails to warn anyone that may use scripts, libraries, ... store IDs in database, ... that may not handle their new format. – SYN Nov 25 '16 at 00:28