Purpose

This Packer AMI Builder creates a new AMI out of the latest Amazon Linux AMI, and also provides a cloudformation template that leverages AWS CodePipeline to orchestrate the entire process.

Source code structure

├── ansible
│   ├── playbook.yaml                       <-- Ansible playbook file
│   ├── requirements.yaml                   <-- Ansible Galaxy requirements containing additional Roles to be used (CIS, Cloudwatch Logs)
│   └── roles
│       ├── common                          <-- Upgrades all packages through ``yum``
├── buildspec.yml                           <-- CodeBuild spec 
├── cloudformation                          <-- Cloudformation to create entire pipeline
│   └── pipeline.yaml
├── packer_cis.json                         <-- Packer template for Pipeline

Cloudformation template

Cloudformation will create the following resources as part of the AMI Builder for Packer:

• cloudformation/pipeline.yaml
  • AWS CodeCommit - Git repository
  • AWS CodeBuild - Downloads Packer and run Packer to build AMI
  • AWS CodePipeline - Orchestrates pipeline and listen for new commits in CodeCommit
  • Amazon SNS Topic - AMI Builds Notification via subscribed email
  • Amazon Cloudwatch Events Rule - Custom Event for AMI Builder that will trigger SNS upon AMI completion

HOWTO

Before you start

• Install GIT if you don't have it
• Make sure AWS CLI is configured properly
• Configured AWS CLI and Git to connect to AWS CodeCommit repositories

Launch the Cloudformation stack

Region	AMI Builder Launch Template
N. Virginia (us-east-1)
Ireland (eu-west-1)
London (eu-west-2)

To clone the AWS CodeCommit repository (console)

1. From the AWS Management Console, open the AWS CloudFormation console.
2. Choose the AMI-Builder-Blogpost stack, and then choose Output.
3. Make a note of the Git repository URL.
4. Use git to clone the repository. For example: git clone https://git-codecommit.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/v1/repos/AMI-Builder_repo

To clone the AWS CodeCommit repository (CLI)

# Retrieve CodeCommit repo URL
git_repo=$(aws cloudformation describe-stacks --query 'Stacks[0].Outputs[?OutputKey==`GitRepository`].OutputValue' --output text --stack-name "AMI-Builder-Blogpost")

# Clone repository locally
git clone ${git_repo}

Next, we need to copy all files in this repository into the newly cloned Git repository:

• Download ami-builder-packer ZIP.
• Extract and copy the contents to the Git repo

Lastly, commit these changes to your AWS CodeCommit repo and watch the AMI being built through the AWS CodePipeline Console:

git add .
git commit -m "SHIP THIS AMI"
git push origin master

Known issues

• Currently, Packer doesn't work with ECS IAM Roles (also used by CodeBuild)
  • That's why we build a credentials file that leverages temporary credentials in the buildspec
  • When Packer supports this feature, this will no longer be necessary
• If Build process fails and within AWS CodeBuild Build logs you find the following line Timeout waiting for SSH., it means either
  • A) You haven't chosen a VPC Public Subnet, and therefore Packer cannot connect to the instance
  • B) There may have been a connectivity issue between Packer and EC2; retrying the build step within AWS CodePipeline should work just fine