Speed up AMI and ASG Creation

Question

Using Ansible I create an AMI of a ubuntu instance then using this AMI to create a Launch configuration and then update and auto-scaling group are there any shortcuts I can take to speed up the ASG and AMI steps, take 10mins+

Answer 1

Use an EBS backed AMI instead of an Instance Store backed AMI. From the AWS docs:

Instead of an Instance store backed AMI, use an EBS-backed AMI. AWS documentation states: 

            Amazon EBS-Backed              Amazon Instance Store-Backed

Boot time   Usually less than 1 minute     Usually less than 5 minutes

--http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/ComponentsAMIs.html#storage-for-the-root-device