Packer — understand how it works in couple minutes

Photo by Greg Rosenke on Unsplash

What exactly is packer ?

It is a tool for creating a server image, with this tool we can create an AMI for AWS, arm for Azure or box for Vagrant. Packer is developed a Vagrant HashiCorp company a feeling of use because the tools that have been developed is the same kind of feel that Vagrant. I think it is a common pattern to create a pre-built server image as an arm/ami and launch an instance based on this.

How start with Packer ?

Just write the definition contents in the json file and execute , and the server image will be created automatically according to the definition contents.

Example build command:

packer build -var "version=$VAGRANT_BOX_VERSION.$NOW" -var box-config.json

Packer Installation

Installation is very simple, we can use package manager or download binary file. All information we can find in documentation.

Downloads | Packer by HashiCorp

How to use Packer to build Azure ARM…