As Ubuntu cloud images are uploaded and registered on the Amazon EC2 cloud, they are referred to as AMI (Amazon Machine Images). Each AMI is a machine template from which you can instantiate new servers. Each AMI has its own unique ID. In order to launch an instance on the EC2 cloud, you first need to locate its ID. This page helps you quickly locate an AMI ID. Here’s how to use it
Type a few characters in the search box signifying what you’re searching for. For example if you would like to find out the AMI-ID for the latest release of “Maverick” Meerkat to run on a “64″ bit “ebs” instance in the “us-east” region, you would search for “mav 64 us-east ebs” or a subset thereof. As soon as you start typing into the search box, the list zooms-in on the entries that match your criteria. Here’s how to start an instance using the AMI ID you just found
1- Locate the AMI-ID by searching the table below
2- Assuming your ec2 environment is setup, run an instance by “ec2-run-instances ami-xxxxx -k ec2-keypair”
For more details on setting up your machine to launch EC2 Instances using command line, Read the EC2 Starters Guide
For using the AWS Web console, checkout this video tutorial