Book Image

HashiCorp Packer in Production

By : John Boero
Book Image

HashiCorp Packer in Production

By: John Boero

Overview of this book

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.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
1
Part 1: Packer’s Beginnings
7
Part 2: Managing Large Environments
11
Part 3: Advanced Customized Packer

Creating an HCP organization

The heart of an HCP structure is an organization. Remember that HCP is multitenant and allows a user to join multiple organizations for separate teams or business units. An organization encapsulates team-role-based access control, billing, and service groups. An organization can create one or more projects for a team to share, including multiple instances of Consul or Vault services. Each project may only have one instance of HCP Packer. Organizations and projects can be created manually via the web page: https://cloud.hashicorp.com/. The menu on the left of the HCP portal will show your service navigation as follows:

Figure 10.1 – The HCP navigation bar

Figure 10.1 – The HCP navigation bar

Traditional services such as Vault and Consul can be deployed in multiple instances per project and are often configured via a Terraform provider. Currently, Packer must be enabled manually with a global registry for the project. At the time of writing, there are three...