Introduction

We talk about what Packer can do for us, and install it.

We can build server images that include our needed dependencies (and even our applications, if we want). These make spinning up servers easier, especially in cases where we wish to autoscale.

These are meant to be used as the image used when creating a new EC2 instance. Having an AMI ready with your dependencies makes it quicker and easier to spin up new instances, especially for auto scaling.

We'll use Packer to build our AMIs. Its configuration is an HCL or JSON file. There's just a few important parts that tell it what images to build and how!

We'll be concentrating on AWS.

I usually use JSON over HCL, but it's not for any specific reason other than "Doing what I usually do".

Why Start with Packer?

Packer will create server images (AMI - amazon machine images) that we'll use in future courses, like the Terraform course.

What installed into the AMI's is up to you and isn't particuarly pertinent (with some exceptions) to learning AWS.

In my case, I install Packer via Brew:

1brew upgrade
2 
3# Install Packer:
4brew tap hashicorp/tap
5brew install hashicorp/tap/packer
6 
7# And later to upgrade Packer:
8brew upgrade hashicorp/tap/packer