Bamboo is a great build server and the possibility to use EC2 instances as build agents makes it really cost efficient and flexible. But – most of the time, the stock images provided by Atlassian need to be customized to fit the purpose. But how to do this properly?
The easiest way is to create a new AMI based on the stock images and customize it.
- Launch a new instance using on of the existing AMIs (e.g. ami-ed6deb9e for the Ubuntu stock image) or use an instance launched by Bamboo
- Connect to it using SSH and customize it.
- Open the EC2 management console, select the instance and choose Actions -> Image -> Create Image
- Afterwards you need to enter a name and choose Create Image
- Copy the AMI id
- Switch back to Bamboo and navigate to Bamboo administration -> Image configurations
- Create a new configuration using the AMI id you copied before
- You can now launch build agents with you custom setup