Use EventBridge rules with Image Builder pipelines - EC2 Image Builder
EventBridge termsView EventBridge rules for your Image Builder pipelineUse EventBridge rules to schedule a pipeline build

Use EventBridge rules with Image Builder pipelines

Events from a wide range of AWS and partner services are streamed to Amazon EventBridge event buses in near real-time. You can also generate custom events, and send events from your own applications to EventBridge. The event buses use rules to determine where to route event data.

Image Builder pipelines are available as EventBridge rule targets, which means that you can run an Image Builder pipeline based on rules that you create to respond to events on the bus, or on a schedule.

Note

Event buses are specific to a Region. The rule and the target must be in the same Region.

EventBridge terms

This section contains a summary of terms to help you understand how EventBridge integrates with your Image Builder pipelines.

Event

Describes a change in an environment that might affect one or more application resources. The environment can be an AWS environment, a SaaS partner service or application, or one of your applications or services. You can also set up scheduled events on a timeline.

Event bus

A pipeline that receives event data from applications and services.

Source

The service or application that sent the event to the event bus.

Target

A resource or endpoint that EventBridge invokes when it matches a rule, delivering data from the event to the target.

Rule

A rule matches incoming events and sends them to targets for processing. A single rule can send an event to multiple targets, which can then run in parallel. Rules are based either on an event pattern or a schedule.

Pattern

An event pattern defines the event structure and the fields that a rule matches in order to initiate the target action.

Schedule

Schedule rules perform an action on a schedule, such as running an Image Builder pipeline to refresh an image on a quarterly basis. There are two types of schedule expressions:

  • Cron expressions – Match specific scheduling criteria using the cron syntax that can outline simple criteria; for example, running weekly on a specific day. You can also establish more complex criteria, such as running quarterly on the fifth day of the month, between 2 AM and 4 AM.

  • Rate expressions – Specify a regular interval when the target is invoked, such as every 12 hours.

View EventBridge rules for your Image Builder pipeline

The EventBridge rules tab in the Image Builder Image pipelines detail page displays EventBridge event buses that your account has access to, and the rules for the selected event bus that apply to the current pipeline. This tab also links directly to the EventBridge console for creating new resources.

Actions that link to the EventBridge console

  • Create event bus

  • Create rule

To learn more about EventBridge, see the following topics in the Amazon EventBridge User Guide.

Use EventBridge rules to schedule a pipeline build

For this example, we create a new schedule rule for the default event bus, using a rate expression. The rule in this example generates an event on the event bus every 90 days. The event initiates a pipeline build to refresh the image.

  1. Open the EC2 Image Builder console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/imagebuilder/.

  2. To see a list of the image pipelines created under your account, choose Image pipelines from the navigation pane.

    Note

    The list of image pipelines includes an indicator for the type of output image that is created by the pipeline – AMI or Docker.

  3. To view details or edit a pipeline, choose the Pipeline name link. This opens the detail view for the pipeline.

    Note

    You can also select the check box next to the Pipeline name, then choose View detail.

  4. Open the EventBridge rules tab.

  5. Keep the default event bus that is pre-selected in the Event Bus panel.

  6. Choose Create rule. This takes you to the Create rule page in the Amazon EventBridge console.

  7. Enter a name and description for the rule. The rule name must be unique within the event bus for the selected Region.

  8. In the Define pattern panel, choose the Schedule option. This expands the panel, with the Fixed rate every option selected.

  9. Enter 90 in the first box, and select Days from the drop-down list.

  10. Perform the following actions in the Select targets panel:

    1. Select EC2 Image Builder from the Target drop-down list.

    2. To apply the rule to an Image Builder pipeline, select the target pipeline from the Image Pipeline drop-down list.

    3. EventBridge needs permission to initiate a build for the selected pipeline. For this example, keep the default option to Create a new role for this specific resource.

    4. Choose Add target.

  11. Choose Create

Note

To learn more about settings for rate expression rules that are not covered in this example, see Rate expressions in the Amazon EventBridge User Guide.