Announcing the end of Windows Installer support for Amazon Web Services Tools for Windows

by Norm Johanson | on

Support for the Amazon Web Services Tools for Windows Installer is ending on June 1, 2023 . After this date, no new versions of the installer will be created to deliver updated versions of the Amazon Web Services tools. It is recommended to migrate away from the installer to the modern package management systems, such as NuGet and the PowerShell Gallery, to ensure you are staying up to date with the Amazon Web Services tooling. Previously published releases of the MSI installer will continue to be available from the existing download link .

Amazon EC2 Windows AMIs will no longer have the MSI preinstalled and will no longer appear as installed in add/remove programs. The Amazon Web Services Tools for PowerShell will continue to be available on the EC2 Windows AMIs.

The Windows installer for Amazon Web Services Tools for Windows was first published in July 2013 to distribute Amazon Web Services’s Windows tools including the Amazon Web Services SDK for .NET , Amazon Web Services Tools for PowerShell and Amazon Web Services Toolkit for Visual Studio . At the time, package managers for .NET, PowerShell and Visual Studio extensions were not widely adopted by the community. Today NuGet , PowerShell Gallery and Visual Studio Marketplace have become the main locations to obtain these tools replacing the need for Amazon Web Services to distribute a separate installer.

Customer can install the Amazon Web Services SDK for .NET and Amazon Web Services Tools for PowerShell from ZIP files if NuGet or PowerShell Gallery are not available for you. These ZIP files are updated as part of every Amazon Web Services SDK for .NET and PowerShell release. Information on the SDK ZIP files can be found in the Amazon Web Services SDK for .NET developer guide here . The Amazon Web Services Tools for PowerShell user guide explains how to install the Amazon Web Services modules with links for installing using the ZIP files. The Visual Studio Marketplace allows downloading the Amazon Web Services Toolkit for Visual Studio VSIX installer for installing the extension offline.