EC2 Image Builder create an LVM AMI

Question

Reading about Image Builder it sounded like I could take an image like arn:aws:imagebuilder:us-east-1:aws:image/rocky-linux-8-aarch64-official-f10f/x.x.x which is using normal partitions and has all the space allocated to / and build an AMI that uses LVM and even change the partitions to match STIG or CIS.

But how do you do that exactly? I ran through a simple build in Image Builder but did not see options to allow me to do those massive changes.

But how do you do that exactly?  I ran through a simple build in Image Builder but did not see options to allow me to do those massive changes.

Answer

Hello, AWS Image Builder uses an existing base image (AMI) of a supporting operating system and then you can customize that base image to prepare your custom image. As base image includes the root volume which already has a partition layout either LVM or non LVM, so we cannot change that layout using Image Builder.

You can refer below AWS blogs to create STIG or CIS compliant images using Image builder.
* https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/mt/building-cis-hardened-golden-images-and-pipelines-with-ec2-image-builder/
* https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/quickly-build-stig-compliant-amazon-machine-images-using-amazon-ec2-image-builder/

Additionally you can refer below documentation, to get an idea how EC2 Image builder works :

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/imagebuilder/latest/userguide/how-image-builder-works.html

EC2 Image Builder create an LVM AMI

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