Launch Template Incorrectly Creating BlockDeviceMappings

Question

I have a weird problem that cropped up in the last couple of weeks.

**Problem**
I have an older launch template which I will call "old_lt". We've used it for about 2 years. Before, when I made a version update to old_lt, I could see a volume listed under "Storage" for the snapshot associated with the LT AMI. If I inspect this LT using "aws ec2 describe-launch-template-versions...", I can see that there is an BlockDeviceMapping for the snapshot and 4 BlockingDeviceMappings for NoDevice entries. These NoDevice entries have been present for the entire two years and have never caused a problem. Now, when I update the LT, there is no storage entry for the snapshot volume. If I attempt to launch an instance from the LT, an EC2 instance is launched with no volume attached to it and get's stuck pending. If I create a new LT using old_lt as the source template, the same issue occurs. If I use the CLI to inspect the template, I can see the four NoDevice entries for BlockDeviceMappings, but no entry for the snapshot volume.

**Solution**
The only solution I have found is to completely rebuild the Launch Template from scratch, which I will call "new_lt". When I completely rebuild the LT without using a source template, I still do not see an entry for the snapshot volume under "Storage", but I see the same four NoDevice entries. When I inspect new_lt using "aws ec2 describe-launch-template-versions..." I do not see any entries for BlockDeviceMappings.

**Question**
I really don't want to rebuild every launch template that we have from scratch. This is not only a time suck and error prone, but this is going to make a mess since we need our existing LTs for rollback. Does anyone have any idea what happened in the last month or so to cause this? This has never been a problem before. The behavior makes me suspect that this is correlated to a recent changes in the LT Management Console interface, but I have been unable to pin down the exact cause.

**Additional Information**
When I modify templates through the Management Console now, I can see "AMI Volumes are not included in the template unless modified" under "EBS Volumes". Is this new? I can't say for sure, but I don't feel like this has been there the entire time I've been on my project.

Accepted Answer

Answering my own question, which took me quite a lot of time to figure out. The issue is that when I am updating the LT through the Management Console, if I don't update the volume, then the LT does not store a BlockDeviceMapping for that volume. This appears to be a new behavior. The problem was that the LT ***does*** store BlockDeviceMappings for the pre-existing NoDevice entries. Since BlockDeviceMappings are stored with the LT, those mappings are used by the LT, not the default mappings. Since there is no longer a mapping defined for the root volume, an instance is launched without one. This is obviously a problem.

To resolve this, I created a new version of the template using the CLI and JQ which deletes the BlockDeviceMappings.

```
aws ec2 create-launch-template-version --launch-template-id  --launch-template-data "$(aws ec2 describe-launch-template-versions --versions  --launch-template-id  --query "LaunchTemplateVersions[0].LaunchTemplateData" | jq 'del(.BlockDeviceMappings)')"
```

Hope this helps someone out there who is as befuddled as I was.

Launch Template Incorrectly Creating BlockDeviceMappings

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