Terraform error "Your query returned no results"

Question

I have below bom-asg.tf file.

data "aws_ami" "bom-ami" {
most_recent = true

  filter {
    name   = "tag:ami_name"
    values = ["${var.environment}-bom-ami"]
  }

  owners = ["****"]
}

resource "aws_security_group" "bom-sg" {
  name_prefix = "${var.environment}-bom-asg-sg"
  vpc_id      = "${var.vpc_id}"
  .....

I am unable to successfully execute refresh and plan commands. I am getting below errors.

terraform plan --var-file=environment-parity.tfvars -target=bom-asg.tf --out apply.out
Refreshing Terraform state in-memory prior to plan...
The refreshed state will be used to calculate this plan, but will not be
persisted to local or remote state storage.


------------------------------------------------------------------------

No changes. Infrastructure is up-to-date.

This means that Terraform did not detect any differences between your
configuration and real physical resources that exist. As a result, no
actions need to be performed.

But when I run refresh. I am getting below error.

terraform refresh --var-file=environment-parity.tfvars
data.template_file.es_access_policy_search: Refreshing state...
data.aws_ami.nginx-ami: Refreshing state...
data.aws_ami.php-search-ami: Refreshing state...
data.aws_ami.ng-ami: Refreshing state...
data.aws_ami.mysql-ami: Refreshing state...
data.aws_ami.frontend-search-ami: Refreshing state...
data.aws_ami.bom-ami: Refreshing state...
data.aws_ami.lg-ami: Refreshing state...
data.aws_ami.rabbitmq-search-ami: Refreshing state...
data.aws_ami.ngas-ng-drupal-ami: Refreshing state...
data.aws_ami.mongodb-ami: Refreshing state...

Error: Error refreshing state: 1 error(s) occurred:

* data.aws_ami.bom-ami: 1 error(s) occurred:

* data.aws_ami.bom-ami: data.aws_ami.bom-ami: Your query returned no results. Please change your search criteria and try again.

Can you please help?

Solution

Terraform data source is to access an existing resource, not to create one.

data "aws_ami" "bom-ami"

As in the documentation, the AMI needs to exist already.

• Data Source: aws_ami

Use this data source to get the ID of a registered AMI for use in other resources.

If you are creating an AMI from an EBS snapshot taken from an EC2 instance (e.g. Amazon Linux EC2), then:

• Resource: aws_ami

Please note the difference between data and resource.

To create a custom AMI image, please also consider Hashicorp packer.