How can I get latest AMI ID for AWS instance?

In Terraform, you can use the AWS CLI to retrieve the latest AMI ID with filter options. Lets see with an example, how you can achieve this:

1. Install and configure the AWS CLI on your local machine.
2. In your Terraform configuration file (e.g., main.tf), define a data source using the aws_ami resource type:

data "aws_ami" "base_ami" {

  most_recent      = true

  owners           = ["amazon"]



  filter {

    name   = "name"

    values = ["al2023-ami-2023.*-x86_64"]

  }



  filter {

    name   = "architecture"

    values = ["x86_64"]

  }



  filter {

    name   = "virtualization-type"

    values = ["hvm"]

  }



}

3. In your Terraform code, reference the latest AMI ID using the data source defined above:

*architecture just added additionally

resource "aws_instance" "ec2_instance" {



    ami = data.aws_ami.base_ami.id

    count = "1"

    subnet_id = "<your subnet>"

    instance_type = "<instance type>"

    key_name = "<private_key>"



}

Remember to run terraform init and terraform apply to initialize and apply the changes respectively.