HashiCorp packer in production : efficiently manage sets of images for your digital transformation or cloud adoption journey / John Boero and Armon Dadgar.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Boero, John, author.

Dadgar, Armon, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Computer networks--Management--Computer programs.

Computer networks.

Cloud computing.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (190 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Birmingham, England : Packt Publishing Ltd., [2023]

System Details:

Mode of access: World Wide Web.

Biography/History:

Boero John: John Boero has 20 years of experience in the tech industry covering engineering, consulting, architecture, and pre-sales. He comes from Chicago, IL in the USA but currently lives in London, UK. He has worked for Red Hat, Puppet, and HashiCorp and remains active in the open source community. All commissions for this book will be donated to the Raspberry Pi Foundation non-profit to encourage coding and computing skills for kids.

Summary:

Set up automated workflows to keep systems and applications consistent globally, regardless of architecture, cloud, or container runtime Purchase of the print or Kindle book includes a free PDF eBook Key Features Automate building and modifying complex software images across multiple OSs and container engines Minimize cost by keeping your systems ready across multiple architectures, including ARM and future RISC-V processors Speed up your time to market by building and testing apps using upstream and future releases Book Description 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. What you will learn Build and maintain consistent system images across multiple platforms Create machine images that can be used in multiple environments Write a spec for a local Packer virtual machine in JSON and HCL Build a container image with Packer in different formats Automate Packer with continuous delivery pipelines Discover how to customize Packer by writing plugins Who this book is for This book is for DevOps engineers, Cloud engineers, and teams responsible for maintaining platform and application images for enterprise private, hybrid, or multi-cloud environments. Familiarity with operating systems and virtualization concepts, with or without using a cloud provider, is a prerequisite.

Contents:

Cover

Title Page

Copyright and Credit

Dedicated

Foreword

Contributors

Table of Contents

Preface

Part 1: Packer's Beginnings

Chapter 1: Packer Fundamentals

Technical requirements

Packer architecture

History of Packer

Who uses Packer?

Alternatives to Packer

Installing Packer

HCL versus JSON

Example legacy JSON

Example PKR.JSON

Example HCL

Summary

Chapter 2: Creating Your First Template

Hello World template for a local VM

Breakdown of components, variables, and artifacts

Using an IDE to guide templates

Applying the VirtualBox builder

Chapter 3: Configuring Builders and Sources

Simplifying your template with variables

Utilizing local system builders

Using VirtualBox builders - ISO, OVF, and VM

Using VMware builders - ISO, VMX, and vSphere clone

Using the QEMU builder

Adding cloud builders

Providing your cloud credentials

Using the AWS builders

Using the Azure builders

Using the GCP builders

Exploring other cloud builders

Building containers

Using the null builder

Chapter 4: The Power of Provisioners

Configuring communicators

Injecting your config or artifacts

Seeding a file or directory into your image once booted

Using templates to populate configuration resources with variables

Running a script or job across all builders

Developing provisioners with the null builder

Chapter 5: Logging and Troubleshooting

Managing stderr and stdout

Using environment variables for logging and debugging

Controlling flow and using breakpoints

Part 2: Managing Large Environments

Chapter 6: Working with Builders

Technical requirements.

Adding applications deployable from vSphere

Adding an AWS EC2 AMI build

Using HashiCorp Vault for credentials

Adding an Azure build

Adding a Google GCP build

Parallel builds

CI testing against multiple OS releases

Pitfalls and things to avoid

Chapter 7: Building an Image Hierarchy

Starting with LXC/LXD images

Docker container image format

Podman plugin for the OCI container image format

Base image strategy

Aggregation and branching out multiple pipelines

Chapter 8: Scaling Large Builds

Speeding up your builds with parallel processes

Preventing parallel processes from causing DoS

Troubleshooting logs in a parallel world

Using image compression

Selecting a compression algorithm for Packer images

Selecting the right storage type for the image lifecycle

Building delta and patch strategies

Part 3: Advanced Customized Packer

Chapter 9: Managing the Image Lifecycle

Tracking image lifecycle

Using the manifest post-processor

Creating a retention policy

Chapter 10: Using HCP Packer

Creating an HCP organization

Configuring HCP Packer in your templates

Using HCP ancestry

Consuming HCP Packer from Terraform

Exploring the HCP REST API

Chapter 11: Automating Packer Builds

Technical requirements:

Identifying common automation requirements

Exploring basic GitHub Actions support

Exploring GitLab CI pipeline support

Using HashiCorp Vault integration for automation

GitLab CI

GitHub Actions

Chapter 12: Developing Packer Plugins

Basics of Go

Sample plugin source

Building and testing your plugin

Protecting Packer from bad plugins

Summary.

Grand conclusion

Index

Other Books You May Enjoy.

Notes:

Includes index.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9781803243849

1803243848

OCLC:

1389773688