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Migrating an AWS VPC from one region to another

These notes will assist you in migrating your virtual private cloud (including EC2’s and an RDS) from one region to another. These notes are not a step by step guide but rather a high-level view of the requirements.

You will need to create your VPC in the target region including the (if needed) RDS subnet. I suggest to use a similar name as to what you used in the source region.

To copy your EC2’s from one location to another, you need to first create an AMI image from your running systems. You can turn them off first but in our experience the live image works fine. I’m sure there are examples of where this doesn’t work but we’re happy with the results we’ve received. Take your AMI image and then copy that to the new region. To use that AMI, you create your EC2 instance as normal but instead of selecting your AMI file from the market place, choose to select it from your AMI images. You will still need to create security groups, etc. But the data (and key to login via SSH) will be as it was in the original region.

To copy your RDS database to your new region, you need to take a snapshot of it first and then copy that to the new region. At the target region, you should choose to restore your snapshot. You will beed to create your security groups again and your path will differ but the content of the data and the credentials to access it will be the same as previous.

I hope these notes save you time and hassle.

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