I have been meaning to put together a Lambda function to create an AMI from a custom EC2 instance.  It’s a pretty typical scenario, but I haven’t taken the time to roll my own. Recently, I ran across an article on StackOverflow which provides a CloudFormation template that:

• constructs an EC2 image,
• creates a Lambda execution role for AMI building,
• creates a Lambda function for constructing an AMI, and
• uses a custom resource to make an AMI from the instance via the Lambda function.

The Lambda function is written in the JavaScript SDK (node.js), is short and sweet, and easy to modify.

So, I modified both the template and Lambda function to make it a little more generic and reusable. Also, I fixed a logic error in a the original Lambda.  Finally, I wanted to customize the name of both the image and AMI, so I created an InstanceName parameter. The only other parameter for the CF template is InstanceType, which I defaulted to t2.micro. Add your desired instance types to the list in that parameter’s AllowedValues attribute. The base AMI for the instance is a region-specific Amazon Linux image. Once the stack is deployed, simply update the template with your userdata changes to create new custom AMI’s. It’s a very helpful tool to have in your CloudFormation toolbox.

The template is available from my aws-mojo repo on GitHub in both JSON and YAML formats.

Enjoy!