Install the AWS client on the computer you want to interact with the AWS API from.

$ pip install awscli

Configure the AWS client with your access/secret key. For example:

$ aws configure
AWS Access Key ID [******]: ACCESS_KEY
AWS Secret Access Key [******]: SECRET_KEY
Default region name [None]:
Default output format [None]:

Create the trust-policy.json file for the vmimport role. For example:

{
   "Version": "2012-10-17",
   "Statement": [
      {
         "Effect": "Allow",
         "Principal": { "Service": "vmie.amazonaws.com" },
         "Action": "sts:AssumeRole",
         "Condition": {
            "StringEquals":{
               "sts:Externalid": "vmimport"
            }
         }
      }
   ]
}

Create the vmimport role using the trust-policy.json file that you just created.

$ aws iam create-role --role-name vmimport --assume-role-policy-document file://trust-policy.json

Create the role-policy.json file. Be sure to use the exact image name that you uploaded to the S3 bucket. For example:

{
   "Version": "2012-10-17",
   "Statement": [
      {
         "Effect": "Allow",
         "Action": [
            "s3:ListBucket",
            "s3:GetBucketLocation",
            "s3:FullAccess"
         ],
         "Resource": [
            "arn:aws:s3:::NAME_OF_IMAGE_IN_S3_BUCKET"
         ]
      },
      {
         "Effect": "Allow",
         "Action": [
            "s3:GetObject"
         ],
         "Resource": [
            "arn:aws:s3:::NAME_OF_IMAGE_IN_S3_BUCKET/*"
         ]
      },
      {
         "Effect": "Allow",
         "Action":[
            "ec2:ModifySnapshotAttribute",
            "ec2:CopySnapshot",
            "ec2:RegisterImage",
            "ec2:Describe*",
            "ec2:FullAccess"
         ],
         "Resource": "*"
      }
   ]
}

Apply the vmimport role to the CloudForms appliance image you uploaded to the S3 bucket.

$ aws iam put-role-policy --role-name vmimport --policy-name vmimport --policy-document file://role-policy.json

Create a containers.json file:

[
  {
  "Description": "NAME OF INSTANCE",
  "Format": "vhd",
  "UserBucket": {
        "S3Bucket": "BUCKET WITH UPLOADED .VHD IMAGE",
        "S3Key": "NAME OF .VHD IMAGE"
      }
  }
]

Use AWS-CLI tools to import the image. Run the following command:

$ aws ec2 import-image --disk-containers file://containers.json --region BUCKET_REGION

Check the progress of your imported image by running the following command:

 $ aws ec2 describe-import-image-tasks --region BUCKET_REGION --import-task-ids import-ami-AMI_ID_GOT_FROM_RESPONSE

You are prompted to create or fetch a security key. Since this is not the first Red Hat CloudForms appliance, choose 2) Fetch key from remote machine. For worker and multi-region setups, use this option to copy the security key from another appliance.