I tried this question on ServerFault, no response yet, trying here:
I have Tomcat8 installed on my instance with startup on reboot configured. Created an AMI from this instance. Now I see:
1) Tomcat was installed again (I can confirm this because, I have removed unnecessary webapps from webapps folder. These unnecessary wars are not there on my original instance).
2) Tomcat is not started by default (I think this could be due to that my start on reboot configuration is messed up).
Interestingly my custom war file is still there. Did anyone observe this? any suggestion on how I can overcome this and not do a fresh install?