Baking your own AWS EC2 images means you can launch fully prepared instances within seconds instead of configuring each one from scratch. In this post we’ll do exactly that with Packer.io.

The starting point is a JSON file that describes our image settings.

{
  "variables": {
    "test-var": "test-value"
  },
  "builders": [{
    "type": "amazon-ebs",
    "region": "us-west-2",
    "source_ami_filter": {
      "filters": {
      "virtualization-type": "hvm",
      "name": "ubuntu/images/*ubuntu-xenial-16.04-amd64-server-*",
      "root-device-type": "ebs"
      },
      "owners": ["099720109477"],
      "most_recent": true
    },
    "instance_type": "t2.micro",
    "ssh_username": "ubuntu",
    "ami_name": "webischia-test {{timestamp}}"
  }]
}

With the definition ready, building the image is a single command and Packer handles the rest for us.

packer build test.json

Our output is:

amazon-ebs output will be in this color.

==> amazon-ebs: Prevalidating AMI Name: webischia-test 1532524410
    amazon-ebs: Found Image ID: ami-ba602bc2
==> amazon-ebs: Creating temporary keypair: packer_5b58777a-03a4-4dbe-123-123
==> amazon-ebs: Creating temporary security group for this instance: packer_5b58777e-e2c9-772f-123-123
==> amazon-ebs: Authorizing access to port 22 from 0.0.0.0/0 in the temporary security group...
==> amazon-ebs: Launching a source AWS instance...
==> amazon-ebs: Adding tags to source instance
    amazon-ebs: Adding tag: "Name": "Packer Builder"
    amazon-ebs: Instance ID: i-069fa516123e4a5
==> amazon-ebs: Waiting for instance (i-069fa516123e4a5) to become ready...
==> amazon-ebs: Waiting for SSH to become available...
==> amazon-ebs: Connected to SSH!
==> amazon-ebs: Stopping the source instance...
    amazon-ebs: Stopping instance, attempt 1
==> amazon-ebs: Waiting for the instance to stop...
==> amazon-ebs: Creating the AMI: webischia-test 1532521230
    amazon-ebs: AMI: ami-02be45db8e912819c
==> amazon-ebs: Waiting for AMI to become ready...
==> amazon-ebs: Terminating the source AWS instance...
==> amazon-ebs: Cleaning up any extra volumes...
==> amazon-ebs: No volumes to clean up, skipping
==> amazon-ebs: Deleting temporary security group...
==> amazon-ebs: Deleting temporary keypair...
Build 'amazon-ebs' finished.

==> Builds finished. The artifacts of successful builds are:
--> amazon-ebs: AMIs were created:
us-west-2: ami-02be45db8e123a19c