Appendix

Topics

Metadata Categories

The data available to instances is categorized into metadata and user-supplied data.

Metadata is specific to an instance and is described in the following table.

Data	Description	Version Introduced
ami-id	The AMI ID used to launch the instance.	1.0
ami-launch-index	The index of this instance in the reservation (per AMI).	1.0
ami-manifest-path	The manifest path of the AMI with which the instance was launched.	1.0
ancestor-ami-ids	The AMI IDs of any instances that were rebundled to create this AMI.	2007-10-10
block-device-mapping	Defines native device names to use when exposing virtual devices.	2007-10-10
instance-id	The ID of this instance.	1.0
instance-type	The type of instance to launch. For more information, see Instance Types.	2007-08-29
local-hostname	The local hostname of the instance.	2007-01-19
local-ipv4	Public IP address if launched with direct addressing; private IP address if launched with public addressing.	1.0
kernel-id	The ID of the kernel launched with this instance, if applicable.	2008-02-01
placement/availability-zone	The Availability Zone in which the instance launched.	2008-02-01
product-codes	Product codes associated with this instance.	2007-03-01
public-hostname	The public hostname of the instance.	2007-01-19
public-ipv4	The public IP address	2007-01-19
public-keys/	Public keys. Only available if supplied at instance launch time	1.0
ramdisk-id	The ID of the RAM disk launched with this instance, if applicable.	2008-02-01
reservation-id	ID of the reservation.	1.0
security-groups	Names of the security groups the instance is launched in. Only available if supplied at instance launch time	1.0

User-supplied data is treated as opaque data: what you give us is what you get back.

	Note
All instances launched together get the same user-supplied data. You can use the AMI launch index as an index into the data. User data is limited to 16K. This limit applies to the data in raw form, not base64 encoded form. The user data must be base64 encoded before being submitted to the API. The API command line tools perform the base64 encoding for you. The data is in base64 and is decoded before presented to the instance.

Note

All instances launched together get the same user-supplied data. You can use the AMI launch index as an index into the data.
User data is limited to 16K. This limit applies to the data in raw form, not base64 encoded form.
The user data must be base64 encoded before being submitted to the API. The API command line tools perform the base64 encoding for you. The data is in base64 and is decoded before presented to the instance.