basic

Build an Ubuntu machine image on AWS with Packer

Prerequisites

• AWS account
• Packer installed
• Authenticate to AWS

  export AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID="<YOUR_AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID>"
  export AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY="<YOUR_AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY>"

• Doc: https://developer.hashicorp.com/packer/integrations/hashicorp/amazon#iam-task-or-instance-role

Init

packer init .

Build

packer build aws-ubuntu.pkr.hcl

# ...
# ==> Wait completed after 5 minutes 15 seconds
# ==> Builds finished. The artifacts of successful builds are:
# --> learn-packer.amazon-ebs.ubuntu: AMIs were created:
# us-west-2: ami-xxxxyyyyzzzztttt

Verify

• Go to AWS Console us-west-2 (The region we build packer AMI): https://us-west-2.console.aws.amazon.com/ec2/home?region=us-west-2#Images:visibility=owned-by-me
• You now can see your AMI with name: learn-packer-linux-aws-redis-<timestamp>

Cleanup

• Once you dont want to use the AMI anymore, follow https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/deregister-ami.html to delete it.