[Bug] Cannot resolve AMI when upgrading to 1.33

[joze144]

What were you trying to accomplish?

I'm trying to update EKS to k8s 1.33.
I am trying to create new nodegroups, but there seems to be an issue with finding AMI.

Error log:

Error: unable to determine AMI to use: error getting AMI from SSM Parameter Store: operation error SSM: GetParameter, https response error StatusCode: 400, RequestID: 661707aa-bdea-4869-b34f-1fb11697ebfe, ParameterNotFound: . please verify that AMI Family is supported

What happened?

I didn't specify any AMI before. So when I just run create nodegroup command, it fails with error:

Error: unable to determine AMI to use: error getting AMI from SSM Parameter Store: operation error SSM: GetParameter, https response error StatusCode: 400, RequestID: a3c45b1e-63c9-4be5-a183-867cab6b3222, ParameterNotFound: . please verify that AMI Family is supported

From documentation I see that default amiFamily is AmazonLinux2, and that AWS doesn't have AMI for it on version 1.33. So I try to set amiFamily to AmazonLinux2023. And I fetched standard AMI for it using

aws ssm get-parameter --name /aws/service/eks/optimized-ami/1.33/amazon-linux-2023/arm64/standard/recommended/image_id \
    --region us-west-2 --query "Parameter.Value" --output text

Then I try to create nodegroup

 - name: ng-v2
    instanceType: m7g.xlarge
    amiFamily: AmazonLinux2023
    ami: ami-0fe0971a9a8a157b4 # fetched from above command
    minSize: 1
    maxSize: 3
    desiredCapacity: 2

But it still fails to resolve AMI. Error log:

Error: unable to determine AMI to use: error getting AMI from SSM Parameter Store: operation error SSM: GetParameter, https response error StatusCode: 400, RequestID: d5513af2-2585-4d35-9d42-26c0caaf2fd5, ParameterNotFound: . please verify that AMI Family is supported

Versions

eksctl version: 0.208.0-dev+bcdd6ecb0.2025-05-12T20:08:12Z
kubectl version: v1.33.1
OS: darwin

[github-actions]

Hello joze144 👋 Thank you for opening an issue in eksctl project. The team will review the issue and aim to respond within 1-5 business days. Meanwhile, please read about the Contribution and Code of Conduct guidelines here. You can find out more information about eksctl on our website

[naclonts]

Hi @joze144, thanks for pointing out this issue. I've raised a PR to fix the bug in: #8405

I ran the steps you mentioned on my fix branch and it seems to work, but feel free to take a look and let me know if you see any issues as well!

[naclonts]

@joze144 eksctl v0.209.0 has just been released, with the default AMI of AmazonLinux2023 for Kubernetes v1.33 and beyond. The error message when attempting to create a v1.33 cluster with AmazonLinux2 should be clearer now as well.

If you see any other issues, please let us know. Thanks again!