diff --git a/CHANGES.txt b/CHANGES.txt
index b79627d904a..c2f4f1756fe 100644
--- a/CHANGES.txt
+++ b/CHANGES.txt
@@ -151,6 +151,7 @@ Release 0.21.0 - Unreleased
    HBASE-2068  MetricsRate is missing "registry" parameter
                (Lars George and Gary Helmling via Stack)
    HBASE-2093  [stargate] RowSpec parse bug
+   HBASE-2100  [EC2] Adjust fs.file-max
 
   IMPROVEMENTS
    HBASE-1760  Cleanup TODOs in HTable
diff --git a/src/contrib/ec2/bin/hbase-ec2-init-remote.sh b/src/contrib/ec2/bin/hbase-ec2-init-remote.sh
index 4d5e7dd1527..04e36a8864e 100644
--- a/src/contrib/ec2/bin/hbase-ec2-init-remote.sh
+++ b/src/contrib/ec2/bin/hbase-ec2-init-remote.sh
@@ -18,7 +18,10 @@ HBASE_VERSION=`echo $HBASE_HOME | cut -d '-' -f 2`
 
 export USER="root"
 
-# up open file descriptor limits
+# up file-max
+sysctl -w fs.file-max=32768
+
+# up ulimits
 echo "root soft nofile 32768" >> /etc/security/limits.conf
 echo "root hard nofile 32768" >> /etc/security/limits.conf