Amazon EC2 instances can access instance-specific metadata, as well as data supplied when launching the instances, using a specific URI.
You can use this data to build more generic AMIs that can be modified by configuration files supplied at launch time. For example, if you run web servers for various small businesses, they can all use the same AMI and retrieve their content from the Amazon S3 bucket you specify at launch. To add a new customer at any time, simply create a bucket for the customer, add their content, and launch your AMI.
More information about EC2 Metadata