ami-search

Find the latest 64-bit HVM- and EBS-enabled Amazon Machine Images (AMI) available for certain OS distributions. For most distributions, we look for gp2 block devices. Images are returned in reverse chronological order, the most recent being the first listed.

Rationale

When I launch AWS EC2 instances for myself or for clients, I typically fall back on just a few OS/Distribution options: Amazon Linux, CentOS, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Ubuntu LTS, or FreeBSD. I like to use the newest AMI available, so I hacked up this script to list the newest images for those distributions.

Prerequisites

This is a bash script, so you'll need bash installed.

More importantly, you'll need the AWS Command Line Interface installed and configured. aws is a Python program, so you'll need Python installed to run it. Most mainstream package managers have access to an awscli package. If not, you can install it via Python's pip utility.

AWS CLI Configuration

Unless you specify a different AWS profile, the "default" one will be used. Likewise, if you don't specify a region, the region associated with your default profile will be used.

Help Screen

Queries AWS for the latest 64-bit HVM- and EBS-enabled images available
for the specified OS distribution. For most distributions, we look for
gp2 block devices. Images are returned in reverse chronological order,
the most recent being the first listed.

usage: ami-search -d distro [-n num] [-p profile] [-r region] [-s]

-d specifies distribution [REQUIRED]; currently valid arguments:
   amazon, amazon2, centos6, centos7, freebsd11, rhel, ubuntu1604,
   or ubuntu1804
-n the maximum number of results to list. Default is 4.
-p specifies a profile in your ~/.aws/credentials file. Uses the
   default profile if none is specified.
-r specifies an AWS region name. The default value for the profile
   you use is found in your ~/.aws/config file.
-s will return only AMI image id. Default is to return image id,
   creation date, and image description.

Examples

These examples are from January 2018. The AMI ID numbers are region-specific and change over time, so you can expect to see different IDs when you run the script.

[~]$ ./ami-search -d centos7
ami-02c71d7a	2017-12-05T03:12:47.000Z	CentOS Linux 7 x86_64 HVM EBS 1708_11.01
ami-51076231	2017-05-09T23:44:25.000Z	CentOS Linux 7 x86_64 HVM EBS 1704_01
ami-0c2aba6c	2017-04-12T00:26:24.000Z	CentOS Linux 7 x86_64 HVM EBS 1703_01

[~]$ ./ami-search -d centos7 -n 1 -s
ami-02c71d7a