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

Who this book is for

This book is for DevOps engineers, cloud computing customers, and even students or people who want to learn about computing platforms and infrastructure as code. Thanks to the platform-agnostic way HashiCorp projects are built with Golang, every example or use case within this book can be run on anything from a multi-million dollar mainframe to a basic cloud instance, or even a 10-dollar Raspberry Pi device. We will also cover automation, which can be explored with free online accounts.

This book is also for veteran Packer users who have developed templates with the old JSON format. Packer version 1.7 introduced two new format options for templates. A lot of existing example code and documentation are now supported as legacy. This book helps with the transition to HCL2 or PKR.JSON for new template development.

We will also dive a bit deeper and cover the basics of writing Packer plugins in Golang for those who encounter a niche or new use case that they would like added to Packer’s features.