AWS AMI Builder

Build Amazon Machine Images (AMIs) using Packer's amazon-ebs builder.

Reference: Amazon EBS Builder

Note: Building AMIs incurs AWS costs (EC2 instances, EBS storage, data transfer). Builds typically take 10-30 minutes depending on provisioning complexity.

Basic AMI Template

packer { required_plugins { amazon = { source = "github.com/hashicorp/amazon" version = "~> 1.3" } } }

variable "region" { type = string default = "us-west-2" }

locals { timestamp = regex_replace(timestamp(), "[- TZ:]", "") }

source "amazon-ebs" "ubuntu" { region = var.region instance_type = "t3.micro"

source_ami_filter { filters = { name = "ubuntu/images/ubuntu-jammy-22.04-amd64-server-" root-device-type = "ebs" virtualization-type = "hvm" } most_recent = true owners = ["099720109477"] # Canonical }

ssh_username = "ubuntu" ami_name = "my-app-${local.timestamp}"

tags = { Name = "my-app" BuildDate = local.timestamp } }

build { sources = ["source.amazon-ebs.ubuntu"]

provisioner "shell" { inline = [ "sudo apt-get update", "sudo apt-get upgrade -y", ] } }

Common Source AMI Filters

Ubuntu 22.04 LTS

source_ami_filter { filters = { name = "ubuntu/images/ubuntu-jammy-22.04-amd64-server-" root-device-type = "ebs" virtualization-type = "hvm" } most_recent = true owners = ["099720109477"] # Canonical }

Amazon Linux 2023

source_ami_filter { filters = { name = "al2023-ami-*-x86_64" root-device-type = "ebs" virtualization-type = "hvm" } most_recent = true owners = ["amazon"] }

Multi-Region AMI

source "amazon-ebs" "ubuntu" { region = "us-west-2" instance_type = "t3.micro"

source_ami_filter { filters = { name = "ubuntu/images/ubuntu-jammy-22.04-amd64-server-" } most_recent = true owners = ["099720109477"] }

ssh_username = "ubuntu" ami_name = "my-app-${local.timestamp}"

Copy to additional regions

ami_regions = ["us-east-1", "us-east-2", "eu-west-1"] }

Authentication

Packer uses AWS credential resolution:

• Environment variables: AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID , AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY

• AWS credentials file: ~/.aws/credentials

• IAM instance profile (when running on EC2)

export AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID="your-access-key" export AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY="your-secret-key" export AWS_REGION="us-west-2"

packer build .

Build Commands

Initialize plugins

packer init .

Validate template

packer validate .

Build AMI

packer build .

Build with variables

packer build -var "region=us-east-1" .

Common Issues

SSH Timeout

• Ensure security group allows SSH (port 22)

• Verify subnet has internet access

AMI Already Exists

• AMI names must be unique

• Use timestamp in name: my-app-${local.timestamp}

Volume Size Too Small

• Check source AMI's volume size

• Set launch_block_device_mappings.volume_size accordingly

References

• Amazon EBS Builder

• AWS AMI Documentation