aws-ami-builder

name	aws-ami-builder
description	Build Amazon Machine Images (AMIs) with Packer using the amazon-ebs builder. Use when creating custom AMIs for EC2 instances.

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"]
}