

PACKER


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-   Website: https://www.packer.io
-   IRC: #packer-tool on Freenode
-   Mailing list: Google Groups

Packer is a tool for building identical machine images for multiple
platforms from a single source configuration.

Packer is lightweight, runs on every major operating system, and is
highly performant, creating machine images for multiple platforms in
parallel. Packer comes out of the box with support for the following
platforms:

-   Amazon EC2 (AMI). Both EBS-backed and instance-store AMIs
-   Azure
-   CloudStack
-   DigitalOcean
-   Docker
-   Google Compute Engine
-   Hyper-V
-   1&1
-   OpenStack
-   Parallels
-   ProfitBricks
-   QEMU. Both KVM and Xen images.
-   Triton (Joyent Public Cloud)
-   VMware
-   VirtualBox

Support for other platforms can be added via plugins.

The images that Packer creates can easily be turned into Vagrant boxes.


Quick Start

Download and install packages and dependencies

    go get github.com/hashicorp/packer

NOTE: There is a great introduction and getting started guide for those
with a bit more patience. Otherwise, the quick start below will get you
up and running quickly, at the sacrifice of not explaining some key
points.

First, download a pre-built Packer binary for your operating system or
compile Packer yourself.

After Packer is installed, create your first template, which tells
Packer what platforms to build images for and how you want to build
them. In our case, we'll create a simple AMI that has Redis
pre-installed. Save this file as quick-start.json. Export your AWS
credentials as the AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID and AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY
environment variables.

    {
      "variables": {
        "access_key": "{{env `AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID`}}",
        "secret_key": "{{env `AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY`}}"
      },
      "builders": [{
        "type": "amazon-ebs",
        "access_key": "{{user `access_key`}}",
        "secret_key": "{{user `secret_key`}}",
        "region": "us-east-1",
        "source_ami": "ami-af22d9b9",
        "instance_type": "t2.micro",
        "ssh_username": "ubuntu",
        "ami_name": "packer-example {{timestamp}}"
      }]
    }

Next, tell Packer to build the image:

    $ packer build quick-start.json
    ...

Packer will build an AMI according to the "quick-start" template. The
AMI will be available in your AWS account. To delete the AMI, you must
manually delete it using the AWS console. Packer builds your images, it
does not manage their lifecycle. Where they go, how they're run, etc. is
up to you.


Documentation

Comprehensive documentation is viewable on the Packer website:

https://www.packer.io/docs


Developing Packer

See CONTRIBUTING.md for best practices and instructions on setting up
your development environment to work on Packer.
