HashiCorp Packer in Production: Efficiently manage sets of images for your digital transformation or cloud adoption journey

Set up automated workflows to keep systems and applications consistent globally, regardless of architecture, cloud, or container runtime

Purchase of the print or Kindle book includes a free PDF eBook

Key Features

• Automate building and modifying complex software images across multiple OSs and container engines
• Minimize cost by keeping your systems ready across multiple architectures, including ARM and future RISC-V processors
• Speed up your time to market by building and testing apps using upstream and future releases

Book Description

Creating machine images can be time-consuming and error-prone when done manually. HashiCorp Packer enables you to automate this process by defining the configuration in a simple, declarative syntax. This configuration is then used to create machine images for multiple environments and cloud providers.

The book begins by showing you how to create your first manifest while helping you understand the available components. You’ll then configure the most common built-in builder options for Packer and use runtime provisioners to reconfigure a source image for desired tasks. You’ll also learn how to control logging for troubleshooting errors in complex builds and explore monitoring options for multiple logs at once. As you advance, you’ll build on your initial manifest for a local application that’ll easily migrate to another builder or cloud. The chapters also help you get to grips with basic container image options in different formats while scaling large builds in production. Finally, you’ll develop a life cycle and retention policy for images, automate packer builds, and protect your production environment from nefarious plugins.

By the end of this book, you’ll be equipped to smoothen collaboration and reduce the risk of errors by creating machine images consistently and automatically based on your defined configuration.

What you will learn

• Build and maintain consistent system images across multiple platforms
• Create machine images that can be used in multiple environments
• Write a spec for a local Packer virtual machine in JSON and HCL
• Build a container image with Packer in different formats
• Automate Packer with continuous delivery pipelines
• Discover how to customize Packer by writing plugins

Who this book is for

This book is for DevOps engineers, Cloud engineers, and teams responsible for maintaining platform and application images for enterprise private, hybrid, or multi-cloud environments. Familiarity with operating systems and virtualization concepts, with or without using a cloud provider, is a prerequisite.

Table of Contents

1. Packer Fundamentals
2. Creating your first Manifest
3. Configuring Builders and Sources
4. The Power Provisioner
5. Logging and Troubleshooting
6. Working with Builders on the Manifest
7. Building an Image Hierarchy
8. Speeding up with Parallel Builds
9. Managing Image Lifecycle
10. Using HCP Packer
11. Automating Packer Builds
12. Developing Plugins

John Boero has 20 years of experience in the tech industry covering engineering, consulting, architecture, and pre-sales. He comes from Chicago, IL in the USA but currently lives in London, UK. He has worked for Red Hat, Puppet, and HashiCorp and remains active in the open source community. All commissions for this book will be donated to the Raspberry Pi Foundation non-profit to encourage coding and computing skills for kids.