I run a bunch of stateless REST APIs and web apps in AWS behind an Application Load Balancer. Everything lives in Auto Scaling Groups (ASGs). I use this AMI as the default base for those instances so they can scale up or down during traffic spikes without me worrying about security drift.
Hardened cloud baseline has simplified fleet management and has eliminated configuration drift
What is our primary use case?
How has it helped my organization?
It basically stopped configuration drift for me. Before, different development teams would bake their own slightly different AMIs, which was a nightmare for security audits. Now, I have a single, pre-hardened baseline. When ASGs scale out, I know the new instances are already patched and locked down. It's made my deployments way more predictable and saved my platform team a ton of babysitting time.
What is most valuable?
The best part is that it's secure the second it boots. Having root SSH disabled, passwords off, and the firewall set to deny-all by default means I don't have to layer on a massive post-launch hardening script. Another huge plus is the pre-installed AWS Systems Manager (SSM) agent. I manage the whole fleet via Session Manager now, which allowed me to completely tear down my old bastion hosts and stop managing SSH keys. Also, they actually stripped out snapd and a bunch of other bloatware, which keeps the boot times really fast. This is super critical when my autoscaling groups are trying to spin up instances under heavy load.
What needs improvement?
It would be cool to have more detailed changelogs with each new release so I can see exactly what packages got updated without having to boot up a test instance and diff it myself.
For how long have I used the solution?
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I used to spin up the stock Canonical Ubuntu AMIs and run a massive bash script during cloud-init to lock them down. It was slow, fragile, and I had to constantly maintain the script as Ubuntu evolved. I switched to this AMI to get that hardening out-of-the-box, which made my scaling workflows much faster and less prone to failures.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The hourly premium is honestly negligible compared to the salary hours I was wasting building, patching, and maintaining my own custom images. If you have a decent-sized fleet, look at the total cost of ownership.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I considered a few routes: sticking with the standard stock AMI and building a Packer pipeline, upgrading to Ubuntu Pro, or maintaining my own custom golden images. I went with ClearScale Ubuntu because I just didn't want the long-term maintenance burden. I wanted a CIS-aligned baseline but didn't want to build or run the pipelines myself.
What other advice do I have?
Just make sure you map out your firewall and port requirements beforehand so your load balancer health checks don't fail on day one. Once you get that launch template dialed in, the image is incredibly solid. It's been a very quiet, set-and-forget baseline for my production environment.
