Packer encrypt copy

This will be useful if:

• You can't copy images that are public (aws limitation)
• You can't copy images between accounts that are encrypted (aws limitation)
• You don't mind your origin image being unencrypted
• You want your running images with your actual data to be encrypted
• You maybe have pay as you go licences RHEL or Windows that would be lost through other means (you can't specify the billing code yourself if you share/copy snapshots)

What happens:

• packer brings up an ec2 instance with the AMI in the destination account
• packer makes an unencrypted AMI from that
• packer makes an encrypted copy from that AMI
• packer destroys the unencrypted AMI
• new AMI in the destination account with a name like something copied from ami-xxxxx so you can follow it back

Things to be aware of / downsides:

• There is a chance that when packer starts the image, something happens that won't happen on subsequent boots or changes things (cloud-init maybe?) and you'll end up imaging an 'unsealed' image.

Usage:

Docker

docker run \
  --rm \
  -e region=eu-west-2 \
  -e aws_id=... \
  -e aws_key=... \
  -e filters="--owner 000000 --filters "Name=name,Values=something*"" \
  chrisns/packer-encrypt-copy

Drone

  packer-copy-notprod:
    image: chrisns/packer-encrypt-copy
    commands:
      - export region=eu-west-2
      - export filters="--owner 000000 --filters "Name=name,Values=something*""
      - export aws_id=${notprod_id}
      - export aws_key=${notprod_key}
      - ./build.sh
    when:
      event: push
      branch: master

Improvements

• allow instance_type to be configurable
• skip temp ssh key pair creation
• skip temp security group creation
• test with windows