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Terraform - Searching for Windows AMIs

# brief


I need to find two AMIs using the terraform AMI filter:


  1. Windows 2019 Base

  2. Windows 2019 with SQL standard 2019


This seems harder that it first sounds as I have done the same with Ubuntu. Searching the internet didn't seem to reveal any examples on how to find the windows AMIs.


So this is how I did it.


(I'm sure this was obvious to a lot of people but I struggled, so thought I would share)


# method


I started with my existing AMI filter code for terraform, which I was using for our own images.


data "aws_ami" "my-image" {
  most_recent = true

  filter {
    name   = "name"
    values = ["${var.env}-image-name-*"]
  }

  filter {
    name   = "virtualization-type"
    values = ["hvm"]
  }

  owners = ["my-account-id"]
}

So I thought well if I just take the windows image name from AWS console, i'm not sure on the owner, so i'll leave that out:


data "aws_ami" "my-image" {
  most_recent = true

  filter {
    name   = "name"
    values = ["Microsoft Windows Server 2019 Base"]
  }

  filter {
    name   = "virtualization-type"
    values = ["hvm"]
  }
}

Well this didn't work, I didn't read the terraform documentation for this data resource, owner is mandatory field.


Fine, I'll just check the AWS console to find the owner ID/name or something..


Nothing in the "launch instance" area, so I went into the detail of the image on marketplace:



Nothing on there....hmmmm


Maybe the documentation on terraform registry has an example...



Not that I can see...but it does mention in the Argument reference section:


owners - (Required) List of AMI owners to limit search. At least 1 value must be specified. Valid values: an AWS account ID, self (the current account), or an AWS owner alias (e.g. amazon, aws-marketplace, microsoft).


OK, so the would make sense that the owner in the this case would be Amazon:


data "aws_ami" "my-image" {
  most_recent = true

  filter {
    name   = "name"
    values = ["Microsoft Windows Server 2019 Base"]
  }

  filter {
    name   = "virtualization-type"
    values = ["hvm"]
  }
  
  owners   = ["amazon"]
}

Still nothing returned...


So must be the name that's wrong...thinking about it, this is probably likely to be a slug, i.e.: no spaces, but what exactly would be the syntax??


More searching reveals nothing...


Then I think to myslef...this must work through the PowerShell AWS cli tools, how do you find an image using that?


I end up at this article:



I run the second command specified:


Get-EC2ImageByName

this displays the list as depicted in the documentation, but nothing for Server 2019...


OK but I bet the naming convention is similar, lets inspect one of these image names..


Get-EC2ImageByName -Names WINDOWS_2016_BASE

The detail is display and I look for the name:


Name : Windows_Server-2016-English-Full-Base-2019.08.16

So on this basis I think my code should look like this:


data "aws_ami" "my-image" {
  most_recent = true

  filter {
    name   = "name"
    values = ["Windows_Server-2019-English-Full-Base*"]
  }

  filter {
    name   = "virtualization-type"
    values = ["hvm"]
  }
  
  owners   = ["amazon"]
}

note: I added a star at the end, as I want to find the latest image, so not interested in the release number.


This works! Now I need to find the SQL image I'm after...


So following the same principle:


Get-EC2ImageByName -Names WINDOWS_2016_SQL_SERVER_STANDARD_2016

and my code looks this this:


data "aws_ami" "my-image" {
  most_recent = true

  filter {
    name   = "name"
    values = ["Windows_Server-2019-English-Full-SQL_2019_Standard*"]
  }

  filter {
    name   = "virtualization-type"
    values = ["hvm"]
  }
  
  owners   = ["amazon"]
}

note: again I used the * star at the end


This also works!


I can now use these image IDs in my terraform plan.


# conclusion


This was much harder than I thought it would be, mind you I find that more and more these days.


Hope this helps.

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