packer

2 important topics, builders and communicators.

How to build an AMI in AWS

There are three options:

• amazon-ebs: Create EBS-backed AMIs by launching a source AMI and re-packaging it into a new AMI after provisioning. If in doubt, use this builder, which is the easiest to get started with.

• amazon-instance: Create instance-store AMIs by launching and provisioning a source instance, then rebundling it and uploading it to S3.

• amazon-chroot: Create EBS-backed AMIs from an existing EC2 instance by mounting the root device and using a Chroot environment to provision that device. This is an advanced builder and should not be used by newcomers. However, it is also the fastest way to build an EBS-backed AMI since no new EC2 instance needs to be launched.

• amazon-ebssurrogate - Create EBS -backed AMIs from scratch. Works similarly to the chroot builder but does not require running in AWS. This is an advanced builder and should not be used by newcomers.

Amazon EBS Volume Builder

The Amazon Plugin is able to create Amazon EBS Volumes which are preinitialized with a filesystem and data.

• amazon-ebsvolume - Create EBS volumes by launching a source AMI with block devices mapped. Provision the instance, then destroy it, retaining the EBS volumes and or Snapshot.

Autenthication

There are some options, I used to use Environment Variables.

### Communicators

Communicators are the mechanism Packer uses to upload files, executer scripts, etc. with the machine being created. Communicators are configured within the builder section.

• none: no communicators
• ssh
• winrm

Also for example for docker builder there are docker communicator that uses docker exec or docker cp.

Command

Initialize my Packer configuration:

packer init .

Format template:

packer fmt .

Syntactically validation:

packer validate .

Build packer image:

packer build aws-ubuntu-pkr.hcl