Q:

Installing Software on an AWS EC2 Windows 2019 Instance

Do EC2 instances automatically save changes made inside a running instance? 
For example, after creating an EC2 Windows 2019 instance, I login as Administrator using RDP and install some software. If the EC2 instance is terminated or rebooted, will the software still be installed when I restart the EC2 instance? 

A:

In layman terms, you should consider your EC2 instance as a new virtual machine running on cloud. Terminate is used to delete an EC2 instance. AWS docs say:

An instance reboot is equivalent to an operating system reboot. In most cases, it takes only a few minutes to reboot your instance. When you reboot an instance, it keeps its public DNS name (IPv4), private IPv4 address, IPv6 address (if applicable), and any data on its instance store volumes.

