Packer Example

This example repository demonstrates the simple usage of Packer.

Examples in this repo:

1. Basic AMI image
2. Image with Redis pre-installed
3. Parallel Builds on AWS and DigitalOcean
4. Turning machine image into a Vagrant Box

Packer template files are written in json format.

Packer template file validation

This is to ensure the template file is correct such that it has the correct Packer syntax.

e.g.

packer validate basic-image.json

Build machine image

Once validated, we can build the machine image using the validated template file.

e.g.

packer build basic-image.json

Basic AMI image

See basic-image.json

Image with Redis pre-installed

Using Packer provisioners to run predefined scripts to install certain software onto the machine images.

e.g.

"provisioners" : [
        {
            "type" : "shell",
            "inline" : [
                "sleep 30",
                "sudo apt-get update",
                "sudo apt-get install -y redis-server"
            ]
        }
    ]

Parallel Builds on AWS and DigitalOcean

Packer allows the generation of multiple machine images for different cloud providers and even multiple machine images for the same cloud providers/platforms at once.

To achieve this Packer syntax contains a "builders" section of the template which is used to define the list of 'builders' to build the machine image(s) for the different and/or same cloud provider/platform.

e.g.

"builders" : [
        {
            // ... AWS
        },
        {
           // ... DigitalOcean
        }
    ],

See the image-with-redis-parallel-builds.json for detailed code block.

Turning machine image into Vagrant Box

Makes use of "post processors".

e.g.

"post-processors" : ["vagrant"]