𝘛ℎ𝘪𝑠 𝑔𝘶𝑖𝘥𝑒 𝑒𝘹𝑝𝘭𝑎𝘪𝑛𝘴 𝘩𝑜𝘸 𝘵𝑜 𝑒𝘹𝑝𝘰𝑟𝘵 𝘢 𝘷𝑖𝘳𝑡𝘶𝑎𝘭 𝘮𝑎𝘤ℎ𝘪𝑛𝘦 𝘧𝑟𝘰𝑚 𝑜𝘯-𝘱𝑟𝘦𝑚𝘪𝑠𝘦 (𝑉𝘔𝑊𝘢𝑟𝘦 𝘞𝑜𝘳𝑘𝘴𝑡𝘢𝑡𝘪𝑜𝘯) 𝑎𝘯𝑑 𝑖𝘮𝑝𝘰𝑟𝘵 𝘪𝑡 𝑖𝘯𝑡𝘰 𝘈𝑊𝘚 𝘢𝑠 𝑎𝘯 𝘈𝑀𝘐.

𝐕𝐌 𝐈𝐦𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐭/𝐄𝐱𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐭 is a service that allows you to import virtual machines (VMs) from your virtualized environment to Amazon EC2 and vice versa. This feature allows you to migrate applications and infrastructure resources from an on-prem virtualized environment to Amazon EC2, back up your VMs to EC2, and create an archive of VMs for redundancy, and recovery after the crash. We can use VM Import/Export with no service charges (except for EC2 VMs and S3 Bucket).

1. Open VMWare Workstation.
2. Select the virtual machine → File → Export to OVF…
3. Choose the location to save the export file.
4. Wait ~5 minutes for export to complete.
5. The main file we will use is the .vmdk file.

1. Create an S3 bucket to store virtual machines.
   • Bucket name: must be unique (e.g., import-bucket-2025).
   • Region: choose appropriate AWS region.
   • Access: Uncheck Block all public access.
2. Click Create bucket.

• Upload the exported .vmdk file from step 1 into the S3 bucket.
• Upload time depends on file size.

1. Create a file trust-policy.json with the following content:

{
   "Version": "2012-10-17",
   "Statement": [
      {
         "Effect": "Allow",
         "Principal": { "Service": "vmie.amazonaws.com" },
         "Action": "sts:AssumeRole",
         "Condition": {
            "StringEquals": {
               "sts:Externalid": "vmimport"
            }
         }
      }
   ]
}

2. Run the following command to create the IAM role:

aws iam create-role --role-name vmimport --assume-role-policy-document "file://trust-policy.json"

3. Verify the role is created.

1. Create a file role-policy.json with the following content:

{
   "Version":"2012-10-17",
   "Statement":[
      {
         "Effect": "Allow",
         "Action": [
            "s3:GetBucketLocation",
            "s3:GetObject",
            "s3:ListBucket" 
         ],
         "Resource": [
            "arn:aws:s3:::import-bucket-2025",
            "arn:aws:s3:::import-bucket-2025/*"
         ]
      },
      {
         "Effect": "Allow",
         "Action": [
            "s3:GetBucketLocation",
            "s3:GetObject",
            "s3:ListBucket",
            "s3:PutObject",
            "s3:GetBucketAcl"
         ],
         "Resource": [
            "arn:aws:s3:::export-bucket",
            "arn:aws:s3:::export-bucket/*"
         ]
      },
      {
         "Effect": "Allow",
         "Action": [
            "ec2:ModifySnapshotAttribute",
            "ec2:CopySnapshot",
            "ec2:RegisterImage",
            "ec2:Describe*"
         ],
         "Resource": "*"
      }
   ]
}

2. Attach the policy to the role:

aws iam put-role-policy --role-name vmimport --policy-name vmimport --policy-document "file://role-policy.json"

Run the following AWS CLI command:

aws ec2 import-image   --description "VM Image"   --disk-containers Format=vmdk,UserBucket="{S3Bucket=import-bucket-2025,S3Key=Ubuntu.vmdk}"

• Replace Ubuntu.vmdk with your exported VM file.
• Import takes ~5–10 minutes depending on size.
• Once complete, check the AMI list in EC2.
• Ensure EBS is not encrypted.

• From the AWS Management Console, select the imported AMI.
• Launch a new EC2 instance using this AMI.

✅ You have successfully migrated a VM from on-premise (VMWare) to AWS EC2.