How to Search for EC2 AMI ID by AWS Region with Ansible?

I’m going to show you a live Playbook and some simple Ansible code.

I’m Luca Berton and welcome to today’s episode of Ansible Pilot.

Ansible Search for EC2 AMI ID by AWS Region

  • amazon.aws.ec2_ami_info

  • Gather information about ec2 AMIs

Let’s talk about the Ansible module ec2_ami_info. The full name is amazon.aws.ec2_ami_info, which means that is part of the collection of modules to interact with AWS. The module’s purpose is to gather information about ec2 AMIs.

Parameters

  • filters dictionary - filter terms

Example:

name: "RHEL-8.3.0_HVM-*-x86_64-*Hourly*"
region: "us-east-1"

The following parameters are useful in order to Search for EC2 AMI ID by AWS Region using the module ec2_ami_info. The only parameter needed is the filters and specify the filters keys and values. For example, let’s search for Red Hat Enterprise Linux machines version 8.3.0 running on HVM infrastructure, architecture x86_64 Hourly paid.

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Playbook

How to Search for EC2 AMI ID by AWS Region with Ansible. I’m going to show you how to Gather Information on a specific “RHEL-8.3.0_HVM” AWS EC2 Hourly Machine for the region “us-east-1” and select the EC2 AMI ID using Ansible Playbook.

code

---
- name: AMI search
  hosts: localhost
  become: false
  gather_facts: false
  vars:
    aws_region: "us-east-1"
    aws_name: "RHEL-8.3.0_HVM-*-x86_64-*Hourly*"
  tasks:
    - name: search for AMI
      amazon.aws.ec2_ami_info:
        filters:
          name: "{{ aws_name }}"
          region: "{{ aws_region }}"
      register: ami_found
    - name: print AMI
      ansible.builtin.debug:
        var: ami_found

execution

$ ansible-playbook ami_search.yml 
[WARNING]: provided hosts list is empty, only localhost is available. Note that the implicit
localhost does not match 'all'
PLAY [AMI search] *********************************************************************************
TASK [search for existing AMI] ********************************************************************
ok: [localhost]
TASK [debug] **************************************************************************************
ok: [localhost] => {
    "ami_found": {
        "changed": false,
        "failed": false,
        "images": [
            {
                "architecture": "x86_64",
                "block_device_mappings": [
                    {
                        "device_name": "/dev/sda1",
                        "ebs": {
                            "delete_on_termination": true,
                            "encrypted": false,
                            "snapshot_id": "snap-03f2e24f30f580353",
                            "volume_size": 10,
                            "volume_type": "gp2"
                        }
                    }
                ],
                "creation_date": "2020-11-02T11:01:38.000Z",
                "deprecation_time": "2022-11-02T11:01:38.000Z",
                "description": "Provided by Red Hat, Inc.",
                "ena_support": true,
                "hypervisor": "xen",
                "image_id": "ami-096fda3c22c1c990a",
                "image_location": "309956199498/RHEL-8.3.0_HVM-20201031-x86_64-0-Hourly2-GP2",
                "image_type": "machine",
                "name": "RHEL-8.3.0_HVM-20201031-x86_64-0-Hourly2-GP2",
                "owner_id": "309956199498",
                "platform_details": "Red Hat Enterprise Linux",
                "public": true,
                "root_device_name": "/dev/sda1",
                "root_device_type": "ebs",
                "sriov_net_support": "simple",
                "state": "available",
                "tags": {},
                "usage_operation": "RunInstances:0010",
                "virtualization_type": "hvm"
            }
        ]
    }
}
PLAY RECAP ****************************************************************************************
localhost                  : ok=2    changed=0    unreachable=0    failed=0    skipped=0    rescued=0    ignored=0
[devops@demo aws]$

idempotency

$ ansible-playbook ami_search.yml 
[WARNING]: provided hosts list is empty, only localhost is available. Note that the implicit
localhost does not match 'all'
PLAY [AMI search] *********************************************************************************
TASK [search for existing AMI] ********************************************************************
ok: [localhost]
TASK [debug] **************************************************************************************
ok: [localhost] => {
    "ami_found": {
        "changed": false,
        "failed": false,
        "images": [
            {
                "architecture": "x86_64",
                "block_device_mappings": [
                    {
                        "device_name": "/dev/sda1",
                        "ebs": {
                            "delete_on_termination": true,
                            "encrypted": false,
                            "snapshot_id": "snap-03f2e24f30f580353",
                            "volume_size": 10,
                            "volume_type": "gp2"
                        }
                    }
                ],
                "creation_date": "2020-11-02T11:01:38.000Z",
                "deprecation_time": "2022-11-02T11:01:38.000Z",
                "description": "Provided by Red Hat, Inc.",
                "ena_support": true,
                "hypervisor": "xen",
                "image_id": "ami-096fda3c22c1c990a",
                "image_location": "309956199498/RHEL-8.3.0_HVM-20201031-x86_64-0-Hourly2-GP2",
                "image_type": "machine",
                "name": "RHEL-8.3.0_HVM-20201031-x86_64-0-Hourly2-GP2",
                "owner_id": "309956199498",
                "platform_details": "Red Hat Enterprise Linux",
                "public": true,
                "root_device_name": "/dev/sda1",
                "root_device_type": "ebs",
                "sriov_net_support": "simple",
                "state": "available",
                "tags": {},
                "usage_operation": "RunInstances:0010",
                "virtualization_type": "hvm"
            }
        ]
    }
}
PLAY RECAP ****************************************************************************************
localhost                  : ok=2    changed=0    unreachable=0    failed=0    skipped=0    rescued=0    ignored=0
[devops@demo aws]$

code with ❤️ in GitHub

Conclusion

Now you know how to Search for EC2 AMI ID by AWS Region with Ansible. Subscribe to the YouTube channel, Medium, and Website, X (formerly Twitter) to not miss the next episode of the Ansible Pilot.

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