Importing & Exporting Instances in AWS. (45 of 285 technotes for 2015)

You can use the AWS VM export Import tool to import VM images from local environment to AWS and convert them to ready to use EC2 instances. Later you can export back to the local environment

Advantages:

• Leverage existing investment in building the local instances - configurations, compliance, etc.
  

Limitations Exporting: 

Cannot export

• Amazon EBS (Elastic Blcok Storage) data volumes
  
• An instance that has more than virtual disk
• Unless it has been previously imported into AWS.

Limitations Importing:

• Can have upto 5 import tasks at the same time per region
  
• Task timeout is 7 days
• Typically you use a compressed version of the dusk image (<1 TB)
  
• Make sure your VM uses a single disk
• Atleast 250 MB of space is required for installing drivers and other s/w
• Multiple NIC not supported. After importing your instance will have single NIC with DHCP for address assignment.
• IPv6 not suported

References:

http://amzn.to/1DgMjMS