If you don’t want to install and configure your test server and would like to take a snapshot of existing server to create a snapshot of your server for creating a test / staging server; please follow these steps.
1. Connect to the EC2 production server instance for which you would like to take a snapshot of.
2. Search for EC2ConfigService Settings from windows search box.
3. In the image tab, under administrator password select random option and Shutdown with sysprep. (selecting the random option will enable you to change your password after you launch your new EC2 instance).
4. Your machine will shut down.
5. Navigate to AWS console and right click on the production instance and click on image and select create image. Click create image and it will run the process to create the image of your server.
6. Once the image is created, navigate to AMI tab and click Launch button and follow the process to select hardware. move forward with all the default selected options.
7. For VPC and subnet settings, you can create a new or select your existing settings from dropdowns.
8. Once the server is launched, you should be able reset your password by selecting pem file that you used for your production.
9. AWS will reset your production server password, so, make sure to get new password, reset it to old password as needed.\
Please feel free to post any questions if you have.
Happy Coding…