You can import image files to the ECS environment to create custom images.  You can then use these images to create ECS instances or change system disks.

Note

When you import a mirror, a snapshot is created, because the snapshot service has already started charging for it. The Snapshot capacity is the size of the imported mirror file, regardless of the System Disk size that was set when the mirror was imported.

Prerequisite

Before importing a mirror, you should have done the following:

Procedures

  1. Log on to the OSS console, Get object URL.
  2. Follow these steps to authorize the ECS service to access your OSS resources:
    1. Log on to the ECS console.
    2. In the left-side navigation pane, choose Snapshots and Images > Images.
    3. Click Import Image.
    4. On the third items of How to import an image. Click Confirm Address.

    5. Click Confirm Authorization Policy on the Cloud Resource Access Authorization page. Go back to the ECS console.

  3. In the left-side navigation pane, choose  Snapshots and Images > Images.
  4. Click  Import Image, 
  5. Enter the following information in the Import Image pop-up window:
    • Region of image: Select the region where you want to deploy the application.
    • OSS Object Address: Copy the object address taken from the OSS console.
    • OSS Object Address: Copy the object address taken from the OSS console. It can be 2 to 128 characters in length. Begins with lower case Latin letters or Chinese characters. Allows numbers, periods (.), underscores (_), colons (:), and hyphens (-).
    • Operating System : Supported OS releases are Windows or Linux. If you want to import a non-standard platform image,  select Linux.
    • System Disk size: The system disk size range is 40 Gib-500 Gib.
    • System Architecture: Choose x86_64 for 64 bit operating systems and choose i386 for 32 bit operating systems and choose.
    • System Platform: The system platform Depends on the Operating System you choosed. Avaliable options:
      • Windows:  Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008, and Windows Server 2012.
      • Linux: Centos, Suse, Ubuntu, Debian, FreeBSD, CoreOS, Aliyun, Customized Linux, and Others Linux. (Linux only) Open a ticket to confirm the selected edition is supported.
      • If your image OS is a custom edition developed from Linux kernel, open a ticket to contact us.
    • Image Format : Supports RAW and VHD format. RAW format is recommended. Note that you cannot use qemu-image to create VHD images.
    • Image Description: The description of the image.
    • (Optional) If you want to import an image that contains data disks, choose  Add Images of Data Disks, and follow the page prompts to set information. Supported data disk capacity range is 5 GiB-2000 GiB.
    • After the information is confirmed, click OK to create a task to import the image.
Note
  • It usually takes 1 to 4 hours to import an image. The duration of the task depends on the size of your image file and the amount of concurrent tasks. You can view the task progress in the image list of the import region.
  • We create snapshots for you when importing images, you can check the Snapshot list for progress monitoring. Before the import mirror task is complete, the status of the snapshot is displayed as Failed. When the task completes, the status is automatically updated Available.

You can find and cancel the image import task in the task manager.

Next steps

After you import the custom image, you may want to Create an instance from a custom image.

See also