Explanation: AMI stands for Amazon Machine Image. An Amazon Machine Image (AMI) is a template that contains a software configuration (for exam-ple, an operating system, an application server, and applications). From an AMI, you launch an in-stance, which is a copy of the AMI running as a virtual server in the cloud. You can launch multiple instances of an AMI, as shown in the following figure. Reference: http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/faqs/