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AWS LightSail Create Terraform

Here’s how to launch a LightSail instance using Terraform. Create a main.tf file.

terraform {
  required_providers {
    aws = {
      version = >= 3.22.0"
      source = "hashicorp/aws"
    }
  }
}
provider "aws" {
  profile = "default"
  region  = "us-east-1"
}
resource "aws_lightsail_instance" "yourinstance" {
  name              = "yourinstance"
  availability_zone = "us-east-1a"
  blueprint_id      = "amazon_linux_2"
  bundle_id         = "nano_2_0"
}

To launch, run the following Terraform commands.

terraform init
terraform apply

AWS LightSail Blueprints

Amazon Lightsail offers a variety of OS blueprints, starting from Amazon Linux 2, Ubuntu 20, Windows Server 2019 to Debian 10 to name just a few. Blueprints are a curated selection of operating systems and software that are preinstalled for the creation of instances. For brevity, only a subset of blueprints are displayed below. The description and licenseUrl portions are truncated. To display an entire list of LightSail blueprints, run this command.

aws lightsail get-blueprints --region us-east-1

Output:

{
  "blueprints": [
        {
            "blueprintId": "ubuntu_20_04",
            "name": "Ubuntu",
            "group": "ubuntu_20",
            "type": "os",
            "description": "Ubuntu 20.04 LTS - Focal. Lean, fast and powerful, Ubuntu Server delivers services reliably ...",
            "isActive": true,
            "minPower": 0,
            "version": "20.04 LTS",
            "versionCode": "1",
            "productUrl": "https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/pp/B087QQNGF1",
            "licenseUrl": "https://d7umqicpi7263.cloudfront.net/eula/product/aced0818- ... .txt",
            "platform": "LINUX_UNIX"
        },
        {
            "blueprintId": "wordpress",
            "name": "WordPress",
            "group": "wordpress",
            "type": "app",
            "description": "Bitnami, the leaders in application packaging, and Automattic, the experts behind WordPress .... ",
            "isActive": true,
            "minPower": 0,
            "version": "5.6.0",
            "versionCode": "1",
            "productUrl": "https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/pp/B00NN8Y43U",
            "licenseUrl": "https://d7umqicpi7263.cloudfront.net/eula/product/7d426cb7- ... .txt",
            "platform": "LINUX_UNIX"
        }
}

In this example, I’m using the query option to display only the blueprints ids.

aws lightsail get-blueprints --query 'blueprints[*].[blueprintId]' --output text --region us-east-1

Output:

windows_server_2019
windows_server_2016
windows_server_2012
windows_server_2016_sql_2016_express
amazon_linux_2
amazon_linux
ubuntu_20_04
ubuntu_18_04
ubuntu_16_04_2
debian_10
debian_9_5
debian_8_7
freebsd_12
opensuse_15_1
centos_7_1901_01
wordpress
wordpress_multisite
lamp_7
nodejs
joomla
magento
mean
drupal
gitlab
redmine
nginx
ghost_bitnami
django_bitnami
plesk_ubuntu_18_0_28
cpanel_whm_linux

Reboot Instance Script

Here’s a new script to reboot a Lightsail instance based on input.

#!/bin/bash
echo 'Choose a server to reboot ...'
echo '1) server-one'
echo '2) server-two'
echo '3) server-three'
echo '4) server-four'
echo '5) sever-five'
echo 'q) Quit'
read -p 'Choose a server to reboot: ' server
case $server in 
	1)
		echo 'Rebooting server-one ...'
		aws lightsail reboot-instance --instance-name server-one
		echo 'Done'
		;;
	2)
	        echo 'Rebooting server-two ...'
		aws lightsail reboot-instance --instance-name server-two
		echo 'Done'
		;;
	3)
		echo 'Rebooting server-three ...'
		aws lightsail reboot-instance --instance-name server-three
		echo 'Done'
		;;
	4)
		echo 'Rebooting server-four ...'
		aws lightsail reboot-instance --instance-name server-four
		echo 'Done'
		;;
	5)
		echo 'Rebooting server-five ...'
		aws lightsail reboot-instance --instance-name server-five
		echo 'Done'
		;;
	q)
		echo 'Quit'
		;;
	*)
		echo 'Invalid option' $server
		;;
esac

Assuming awscli is working and correct permission is granted to user.

AWS CLI Using Query

Instead of using AWS and JQ to get the snapshot names, you can do it with a single command using –query.

Here are the previous commands.

/usr/bin/aws lightsail get-instance-snapshots --region us-east-1 --profile default > $snaps
cat $snaps | jq -r '.instanceSnapshots[] | .name' > $names

Using query.

aws lightsail get-instance-snapshots \
--query 'instanceSnapshots[*].[name]' \
--region us-east-1 \
--profile default \
--output text > $names

AWS LightSail Restrict IP Address

AWS LightSail now has the ability to restrict IP addresses in their firewall rules. LightSail instances can now be secured by limiting firewall rules from an IP CIDR block or a single IP address. For example, you can restrict who can SSH into your instance by limiting it to just your IP address, so only you can SSH into your machine. Another feature AWS added in their LightSail firewall is support for ping, which could be helpful for monitoring and checks.