We have seen several hands-on examples of how to obtain or build Linux virtual machine images for use in a wide variety of scenarios and environments. We have seen how Ansible lends itself to automating this process, and hence how it complements the image build process to support the good practices we have previously discussed for automation in the enterprise and, in particular, the creation and management of an SOE.
In this chapter, you learned how to build Linux images for templating purposes and indeed obtain and verify ready-made ones. You then learned through practical examples how to customize these template images with Ansible, covering key concepts such as package installation and configuration file management. Finally, you learned how to ensure that image builds are clean and tidy and do not contain data that would either be wasteful or harmful to replicate across...