AWS AMIs Stemcells deprecate after 2 years, ERROR Stemcell does not contain an AMI

Products

• Operations Manager

Issue/Introduction

AWS automatically deprecates public AMIs 2 years after they are published, including the AMIs for vars.ops_manager and stemcells. These vars.ops_manager AMIs do not appear in AMI searches, but can still be launched using the aws CLI or Platform Automation. Deploying a deprecated light stemcell using AWS CPI v100 or below will result in an error.

Example AWS CPI error:

Task 10 | 23:24:16 | Update stemcell: Uploading stemcell bosh-aws-xen-hvm-ubuntu-xenial-go_agent/621.125 to the cloud (cpi: 543ec2c1aa4f72578fa3) (00:00:02)
                  L Error: CPI error ‘Bosh::Clouds::CloudError’ with message ‘Stemcell does not contain an AMI in region us-west-1’ in ‘create_stemcell’ CPI method (CPI request ID: ‘cpi-457127’)

Environment

Product Version: 2.10

Resolution

 Potential workarounds to deprecated stemcell AMIs error are:

- Upgrade to a newer Ops Manager.

- Upload a new, non-deprecated stemcell and assign it to all tiles.

- Edit the stemcell on disk to point to correct AMI:

1. Resolve the issue by editing the light-bosh-stemcell-621.211-aws-xen-hvm-ubuntu-xenial-go_agent.tgz file located at /var/tempest/stemcells.
2. Untar the file and edit the stemcell.MF file.
3. Obtain amd-id for OpsManager either from AWS AMI tab or by command (replace with correct version below):

   aws ec2 copy-image --source-region <region> --source-image-id <ami-id> --region <region> --name "Ops_Manager_v2.10.33"

4. Replace the region and ami-id in stemcell.MF file with the copied ami-ID and rezip the 4 files to light-bosh-stemcell-621.211-aws-xen-hvm-ubuntu-xenial-go_agent.tgz file. 

   dev_tools_file_list.txt image packages.txt stemcell.MF

5. The new .tgz file will reference your ami-id and deploy the bosh director VM

   tar -czvf light-bosh-stemcell-621.211-aws-xen-hvm-ubuntu-xenial-go_agent.tgz *

Please refer to Tanzu stemcell documentation for release dates of different stemcell versions.