snehangshuk/amifinder

CloudFormation Custom Resource to dynamically find valid Windows AMI Ids

AMIFinder

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.

Usage

The cfn directory contains two 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_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.

How does it work ?

The amifinder.template.json CFN template creates the following environment :

• a SNS Topic - to be used by CFN to call the Custom Resource and to be inserted in the amifinder_test.template .json
• 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 and findAMI, 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.

TODO

• improve based on collected feedback