hashicorp / hashicorp/packer-plugin-amazon

Support creating an AMI via a snapshot of the root volume

Open
#520 0 comments 3 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub
enhancement
Dominant language
Go
Stars
91
Forks
141
Avg merge
2d 18h
Merged PRs (30d)
3

Description

#### Community Note

Please vote on this issue by adding a 👍 [reaction](https://blog.github.com/2016-03-10-add-reactions-to-pull-requests-issues-and-comments/) to the original issue to help the community and maintainers prioritize this request.
Please do not leave "+1" or "me too" comments, they generate extra noise for issue followers and do not help prioritize the request.
If you are interested in working on this issue or have submitted a pull request, please leave a comment.

#### Description

AWS recommends [creating AMIs via a snapshot of a root EBS volume](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/creating-an-ami-ebs.html#creating-launching-ami-from-snapshot) as a faster way of creating images. (This would be using the [RegisterImage](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/APIReference/API_RegisterImage.html) API rather than the [CreateImage](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/APIReference/API_CreateImage.html) API.) Despite this potentially offering large speed improvements, this feature seems to be missing from the Amazon Packer plugin.

The [`amazon-ebssurrogate` builder](https://developer.hashicorp.com/packer/integrations/hashicorp/amazon/latest/components/builder/ebssurrogate) exists, but as far as I can tell, that's designed to create an AMI based on a snapshot of a volume that is _not_ the root volume of the Packer builder instance.

#### Use Case(s)

- Creating AMIs more quickly

#### Potential configuration

This could be implemented using a `use_create_image` option on the `amazon-ebs` builder, similar to the option that already exists on the `amazon-ebssurrogate` builder. The main difference is that `use_create_image` would need to default to `true` on the `amazon-ebs` builder to preserve existing behavior.

```hcl
source "amazon-ebs" "ebs-source-abc" {
// ...
use_create_image = false
// ...
}
```

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

Assessment

This issue has not been assessed yet.

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.