AMIFinder is a sample [CloudFormation Custom Resource] (http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSCloudFormation/latest/UserGuide/crpg-walkthrough.html) environment.
This Custom Resource uses EC2's DescribeImage API to find an Amazon Windows Base image (64 bits, ebs based) of the specified version.
Use this Custom Resource to avoid hard coding AMI ids inside your CFN templates, at the risk of having errors because of deprecated AMI IDs.
The cfn
directory contains three CloudFormation templates:
-
amifinder.template.json
setup the complete infrastructure to implement the Custom Resource "AMIFinder". See below for a list of resources it creates. -
amifinder_test.template.json
is used for unit testing. -
amifinder_sample.template.json
is a sample template that shows how to use the Custom Resource :
{
"AWSTemplateFormatVersion": "2010-09-09",
"Description": "Create Infrastructure required to run finAMI Custom resource",
"Resources": {
"AMIFinderTest": {
"Type": "Custom::AMIFinder",
"Version": "1.0",
"Properties": {
"ServiceToken": "<insert SNS ARN here>",
"Version": "2012"
}
}
},
"Outputs" : {
"WindowAMIID" : {
"Value" : { "Ref" : "AMIFinderTest" }
}
}
}
Other resources in the template can use { "Ref" : "AMIFinderTest" }
to refer to the AMI ID. Typically, you will referer to the AMI from an EC2::Instance
resource.
This template can not run "as is", you need to insert your Custom Resource's implementation SNS Topic ARN as
ServiceToken
value.
The amifinder.template.json
CFN template creates the environment to implement the custom resource :
- a SNS Topic - to be used by CFN to call the Custom Resource. The SNS Topic ARN must be inserted in the
amifinder_test.template.json
and your other CFN templates using this Custom resource - a SQS Queue subscribed to the topic
- a SQS Policy allowing SNS to post messages to the queue
- an IAM Role to allow an EC2 instance to read from the queue and to call DescribeImage EC2 API
- a Security Group allowing inbound SSH connections (debugging only - can be removed once everything is working)
- an EC2 Instance bootstrapped with
cfn-resource-bridge
andfindAMI
, a custom python helper script
cfn-resource-bridge
will poll the queue, waiting for CloudFormation messages, and will call appropriate shell
scripts to respond to create
, update
and delete
requests.
In this example, update
and delete
shell scripts are empty. Only create
is implemented. It uses findAMI
to retrieve the correct AMI IDs.
- improve based on collected feedback