AWS 101 – Series 1 of N – Monitoring and Maintenance – How to Check if an Amazon Instance Is a Valid Approved Golden Image

Problem:

• How to check if an Amazon instance is a valid approved golden image

Solution:

• Problem Detection 
  • You can use CLI as well as Console to perform this action
  • Using CLI
    •  Save the below script as checkIfValidApprovedImage.sh
    • Change the mode – chmod u+x checkIfValidApprovedImage.sh
    • The AWS command ‘aws ec2 describe-instances‘ will return all instances in a specific region and is filtered by ImageId
    • The array arrImages is holding the array of all ImageId
    • Run a for loop with command ‘aws ec2 describe-images‘ to get the Image owner
    • If the image owner is not “Self” it is not a valid approved image specific to your own customized base image
      

      #!/bin/bash#regions to check
      arrRegions=(“us-east-1” “us-east-2”); #image list
      for regionId in ${arrRegions}
      do
      echo “Instances for $regionId region:”
      arrImages=$(aws ec2 describe-instances –region $regionId –output text –query ‘Reservations[*].Instances[*].ImageId’); #get Image owner
      for imgId in ${arrImages}
      do
      aws ec2 describe-images –region $regionId –output text –image-ids $imgId –query ‘Images[*].ImageOwnerAlias’
      done
      done

  • Using Console
    • Go to EC2 Dashboard, Select Instances tab and then select a specific instance
    • In the Description tab, click on AMI ID link and select the AMI ID from the pop up. Copy the AMI ID.
    • 
    • Now go to AMI tab is Images section of EC2 Dashboard
    • Select “Owned by me” from the drop down and filter by AMIID. Paste the AMI ID for the filter.
    • 
    • If no rows are returned it means the images are either from Market Place or Amazon and are not “Self” customized approved valid image.

• Problem Remedy – to continue