Saving a custom AMI isn’t too difficult once you know how, but it takes a bit of digging around to find out how all the pieces work. I am going to assume you have an EC2 and S3 account already, know how to bring up an EC2 instance, have your Amazon API Tools installed on your Mac or Linux desktop, have your private and cert key’s installed, and have your aws access key id, aws secret access key, and Amazon account number handy (the account number is under your name on the Amazon account page. It looks like XXXX-XXXX-XXXX).