Automatically cleanup outdated AMIs in all AWS regions

Nov 27, 2023

Here is a script you can use to automatically cleanup AMIs older than 60 days (configurable), while keeping the 2 most recent AMIs in each region. This helps to remove outdated images, as well as reducing storage costs for your AMIs.

Particularly useful in the case of runs-on.com, where we regularly rebuild base images whenever GitHub releases a new version of the image runner.

The bin/cleanup script (simply adjust the filters as needed):

#!/bin/bash
# Deregisters old AMIs and deletes associated snapshots, in all regions

set -e
set -o pipefail

APPLICATION="RunsOn"
REGIONS="$(aws ec2 describe-regions --query "Regions[].RegionName" --output text)"
# Number of days to keep AMIs
DAYS_TO_KEEP=${DAYS_TO_KEEP:=60}
# Define the age threshold in seconds (60 days)
AGE_THRESHOLD=$((DAYS_TO_KEEP*24*3600))
# Get the current timestamp in seconds since epoch
CURRENT_TIMESTAMP=$(date +%s)

for region in ${REGIONS[@]}; do
    echo "---- Region: ${region} ---"
    # List all your AMIs and extract relevant information using the AWS CLI
    image_count=$(aws ec2 describe-images --owner self --filters "Name=tag:application, Values=${APPLICATION}" --query 'length(Images)' --region "$region" --output text)
    echo "     Total AMIs in this region: ${image_count}"

    if [ "$image_count" -lt 2 ]; then
      echo "     Less than 2 AMIs found, skipping"
      continue
    fi

    aws ec2 describe-images --owner self --region "${region}" --filters "Name=tag:application, Values=${APPLICATION}" --query 'Images[*].[Name,ImageId,CreationDate]' --output text | \
      while read -r name image_id creation_date; do
        # Parse the creation date into seconds since epoch
        image_timestamp=$(date -d "$creation_date" +%s)

        # Calculate the age of the AMI in seconds
        age=$((CURRENT_TIMESTAMP - image_timestamp))

        # Check if the AMI is older than the threshold
        if [ $age -gt $AGE_THRESHOLD ]; then
          echo "     ! Deregistering AMI: ${image_id} (${name}) created on $creation_date"
          snapshot_id=$(aws ec2 describe-images --image-ids "$image_id" --query "Images[].BlockDeviceMappings[].Ebs.SnapshotId" --region "${region}" --output text)
          if [ "$DRY_RUN" = "true" ]; then
            echo "     DRY_RUN is set to true, skipping deregistering AMI ${image_id} and deleting snapshot ${snapshot_id}"
            continue
          fi
          aws ec2 deregister-image --image-id "$image_id" --region "${region}"
          echo "     ! Deleting snapshot ${snapshot_id} for AMI ${image_id}"
          aws ec2 delete-snapshot --snapshot-id "${snapshot_id}" --region "${region}"
        fi
      done
done

Example output:

---- Region: ap-southeast-2 ---
     Total AMIs in this region: 0
---- Region: eu-central-1 ---
     Total AMIs in this region: 5
     Deregistering AMI: ami-0576e83d0a0f89fbe (runner-ubuntu2204-1699888130) created on 2023-11-13T16:53:48.000Z
     Deleting snapshot snap-07db95a7f230d3f76 for AMI ami-0576e83d0a0f89fbe
     Deregistering AMI: ami-004d4d18e6db2f812 (runner-ubuntu-22-1699873337) created on 2023-11-13T12:40:48.000Z
     Deleting snapshot snap-0500b0e3fb95ab36a for AMI ami-004d4d18e6db2f812
     Deregistering AMI: ami-0e6239eae649effcd (runner-ubuntu22-20231115.7-1700233930) created on 2023-11-17T17:01:58.000Z
     Deleting snapshot snap-05e795e4c6fe9e66f for AMI ami-0e6239eae649effcd
     Deregistering AMI: ami-0dd7f6b263a3ce28c (runner-ubuntu22-20231115-1700156105) created on 2023-11-16T19:24:38.000Z
     Deleting snapshot snap-02c1aef800c429b76 for AMI ami-0dd7f6b263a3ce28c
---- Region: us-east-1 ---
     Total AMIs in this region: 4
     Deregistering AMI: ami-0b56f2d6af0d58ce0 (runner-ubuntu2204-1699888130) created on 2023-11-13T15:54:22.000Z
     Deleting snapshot snap-0f2e8759bea8f3937 for AMI ami-0b56f2d6af0d58ce0
     Deregistering AMI: ami-04266841492472a95 (runner-ubuntu22-20231115.7-1700233930) created on 2023-11-17T16:02:34.000Z
     Deleting snapshot snap-0f0fcf9c6406c3ad9 for AMI ami-04266841492472a95
     Deregistering AMI: ami-0738c7108915044fe (runner-ubuntu22-20231115-1700156105) created on 2023-11-16T18:21:40.000Z
     Deleting snapshot snap-03f16588f59ed7cea for AMI ami-0738c7108915044fe
     ...

Example GitHub Action workflow file to schedule a cleanup every night:

name: Cleanup

concurrency:
  group: ${{ github.workflow }}-${{ github.ref }}

on:
  workflow_dispatch:
  schedule:
    - cron: '0 2 * * *'

jobs:
  check:
    timeout-minutes: 30
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - name: Configure AWS credentials
        uses: aws-actions/configure-aws-credentials@v4
        with:
          aws-access-key-id: ${{ secrets.AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID }}
          aws-secret-access-key: ${{ secrets.AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY }}
          aws-region: us-east-1
      - run: bin/cleanup