About creation of Amazon Machine Image (AMI) in Amazon from Veritas System Recovery backups

Last published : Apr 02, 2026
You can now create an Amazon Machine Images (AMI) in Amazon cloud using Veritas System Recovery recovery points and view the status of an existing AMI. Veritas System Recovery provides two PowerShell scripts using which you can create AMI in Amazon cloud and view the status of an existing AMI. You can use the AMI to launch an EC2 instance in cloud.
  • CREATE_AMI_IN_AWS: Script for creating an AMI
  • QUERY_AMI_CREATION_STATUS: Script for viewing status of an AMI
During a disaster recovery situation you can restore your machine based on the available recovery points. Using this feature you can bring up a virtual machine using the created AMI in Amazon Web Services.
Prerequisites to create an AMI in Amazon:
  • You must have a machine that has Veritas System Recovery 21 or later installed on it, and a backup job that ran successfully to create a .sv2i file. The recovery points must be in a local folder or a network location.
  • The AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) user credential that you use must have the administrator role assigned.
  • The machine where you are running the AMI script must have AWS SDK and AWSCLI installed.
If you have Veritas System Recovery 21 or earlier installed on your computer, the PowerShell supports conversion to .vhdx or .vhd files from backups that are not password protected. You can create an AMI from any existing .vhdx or .vhd files.
This feature is not available from the Veritas System Recovery user interface and only available using the PowerShell scripts.
To create an AMI, system reserved information is required. Ensure that you create the system drive backup with system reserved partition along with the data drive backup.
If you have .sv2i files stored in an Amazon S3 bucket or any other cloud storage, you must first download the files to a local or network destination or to the machine on which the script is running. You cannot specify a cloud destination to select the .sv2i files.
You must use recovery points with a .vhdx or .vhd format. If you have a .sv2i file, you must first convert the file to a .vhdx or .vhd format. You can do this in two ways:
  • Convert the recovery point to a .vhdx or .vhd format using Veritas System Recovery virtual conversion job.
  • Use a PowerShell command to convert the recovery points to a .vhdx or .vhd format.
If you want to convert recovery points to a .vhdx or .vhd format, Veritas System Recovery supports conversion of recovery points that are less than 2 terabytes.
The CREATE_AMI_IN_AWS script only supports a .vhdx or .vhd format and does not support the .vmdk format. If you convert the recovery points from Veritas System Recovery, ensure that the file format is .vhdx or .vhd as these are the only formats supported to create an AMI.
See How to create an Amazon Machine Image (AMI).
See How to view the conversion tasks and AMI status.