AMI Pipeline with Packer and CodePipeline

This is a small demo showing the possibilities for creating and updating an AMI using Packer, CodePipeline, CodeBuild, Chef, and tested using Chef's InSpec.

Deployment

Deploy the CloudFormation template cfn/pipeline.yml. You'll need permissions on CloudFormation, EC2, IAM, S3, CodePipeline and CodeBuild. The following parameters are required:

• A GitHub username or org name (e.g. https://github.com/stelligent)
• A repository name
• The branch (e.g. master)
• A GitHub OAuth Token with at least read access to the repository

How it works

Once the CloudFormation stack has deployed, the Pipeline will build a simple AMI with Nginx and a basic HTML file using Chef.

The pipeline accomplishes this by running the following tasks:

1. Pull the latest version of the code from the repo/branch
2. Validate the Packer template
   • packer/ami.json
3. Build the AMI via Packer and Chef
   • packer/ami.json
   • packer/ami_params.json
   • cookbooks/nginx
4. Launch a test instance with the newly built AMI
   • cfn/test-instance.yml
5. Test the AMI using InSpec
   • test/inspec/test.rb
6. Delete the test instance
7. Publish the AMI by saving the AMI ID in an SSM Parameter called /packerdemo/packer_ami_pipeline/LatestAMI

Structure

• buildscripts/ Scripts used to configure test instance
• buildspec/ CodeBuild BuildSpec YML files
• cfn/ CloudFormation templates
• cookbooks/ Chef Cookbooks used to configure Image
• packer/ Packer templates and parameter files
• test/ InSpec tests