Packer vs ansible

Packer vs ansible. packer fmt is used to fix the format of the template. Playbooks can be executed once the guest image building is ready and boots up for the first time. Download now. Ansible or user data executes on each server individually, where as packer gives you a single ami which you can use in your launch config. Ansible can be used for quite a bit more than create directories from a single playbook file, and can manipulate a fair number of resources from system settings (users, groups, cronjobs, package repositories) to applications (Apache httpd, ntpd) to cloud assets (AWS EC2 instances, OpenStack storage). Mixing them is a pain in the ass The bootstrap script will ensure that the base updates are applied and WinRM is set up for Ansible to talk to; Ansible will then run the provisioning steps against that host over the newly set up WinRM connection; Ansible will then install all available updates and reboot accordingly (this step can take hours so be prepared to wait) The problem occurs because we are specifying the --extra-vars command line argument as part of the extra_arguments configuration. Content files that are needed inside the image, like *. Compare Visual Studio Code vs Packer. Another good aspect about packer is the ability to run packer validate against Terraform and Ansible are two prominent tools in the infrastructure as code domain. It dynamically creates an Ansible inventory file configured to use SSH, runs an SSH server, executes ansible-playbook, and marshals Ansible plays through the SSH server to the machine being provisioned by Packer. This allows to create different types of Packer images based on different playbooks. Docker and Packer are both popular tools used in software development and deployment, but they serve different purposes and have distinct features. You feed it a bunch of configuration and it can then create VMs for lots of different hypervisors and Why Consider Ansible as an Alternative to Terraform? While Terraform is known for its provisioning infrastructure capabilities, employing the HashiCorp Configuration Language (HCL) for defining infrastructure as code (IaC), Ansible brings its strength as a configuration management tool. It consists of two jobs: packer-ansible and Terraform-commands. Expand user menu Open settings menu. packer. Install Docker. hcl Follow the Packer output logs to see the image successfully generated. There’s a lot more that could be said on the nuances of Packer, Ansible, WinRM, Azure, and the like. Open menu Open navigation Go to Reddit Home. For an app where there is minimal load and security/reliability concern, VMs are still a great option that provide a lot of value for the buck Compare Ansible vs Packer. Ansible creates consistent environments. However, Packer may require additional setup compared to Vagrant. 1 of 66. Running Packer Build with HCL packer build -force -on-error=ask -var-file variables. Packer authenticates with Azure using a service principal. You only need to set up the primary instance and create an SSH connection between the primary instance and the nodes. json wants. Packer is not an alternative to Ansible, since it is an image creation tool that automates the building Packer itself doesn’t do any provisioning by itself - except uploading files to the machine - but rather uses other provisioning tools like a simple Shell or Ansible by means of provisioners. 4 Run ansible-playbook with a user-data script on an EC2 instance. In the HCL2 Packer templates, we must always pre-define our variables in the HCL equivalent of the "variables" stanza. Devops guy at X20X Development LTD · Dec 9, 2018 | 23 upvotes · 9. Here is a command for same. I haven’t touched any one of those in more than 3 years. 1 VM in virtualbox. I am struggling to figure out how to make the Packer Ansible provisioner connect to the qemu instance that has been created by Packer. Ansible is a simple yet powerful server and configuration management tool, that can transform the DevOps of an organization by modernizing IT and enabling faster deployment of applications. js vs Spring Boot Flyway vs Liquibase AWS CodeCommit vs Bitbucket vs GitHub. Ansible is written in Python, PowerShell, Shell, and Ruby. aws folders to share keys and configs that the command might need. com Infrastructure as Code 2020. This script configures the build instance and the services running on it. 12. * and 2. 0. Create ansible_winrm_*: Any additional keyword arguments supported by winrm. To catch these errors early in the development process, I implemented extensive logging. Terraform specializes in public cloud infrastructure provisioning, which is one of many use cases in the world of IT automation, and Ansible Automation Platform addresses a wide range of automation use Set the package provider to use when searching for a package. hcl On the Terraform side, since file packer/versions. Get app Get the Reddit app Log In Log in to Reddit. Terraform - Describe your complete infrastructure as code and build resources across providers Type: azure-arm Artifact BuilderId: Azure. Note that jsonencode({ "houdini_major_version_list" = [19. Ansible automates provisioning and ongoing maintenance of existing Ansible: An automation tool that simplifies the deployment and management of infrastructure and applications. All of these tools are general purpose automation software. https://github. Most articles I've come across cover the use of cloud providers (e. I Packer plugin for Hyper-V Builder. pip' was not found in /tmp/packer-provisioner-ansib Docker image containing Packer, QEMU, ViartualBox and Ansible (with boto3 and winrm) - ruzickap/docker-packer_qemu_virtualbox_ansible Bento is a project that encapsulates Packer templates for building Vagrant base boxes. Ansible will be We build our images on Packer with Ansible after any system-level change (or weekly, to pull in updates) and auto-rotate the old images out. 3. production. Stack Overflow for Teams Where developers & technologists share private knowledge with coworkers; Advertising & Talent Reach devs & technologists worldwide about your product, service or employer brand; OverflowAI GenAI features for Teams; OverflowAPI Train & fine-tune LLMs; Labs The future of collective knowledge sharing; About the company Visit the blog CLoudformation vs Terraform. Known for its simplicity and ease of use, Ansible Automation Platform is an open source, command-line IT automation software application that uses YAML-based "playbooks" to configure systems, deploy software, and orchestrate advanced workflows to support application deployment, system updates, networking configuration and operation, and Yep this. Then, deploy this image using Terraform. Then, run When deciding between Ansible, Packer, and Terraform, it’s important to consider your specific needs. x/AlmaLinux 9. Ansible provides a more flexible way to fine-tune Hashicorp Packer images compared to cloud-init. Kickoff is at 7 p. bashrc or . The msi provider scans for MSI packages installed on a machine wide and current user context based on the ProductCode of the MSI. Terraform auto picksup the AMI and launches the EC23. Provisioning happens on the running machine before the static image is created. hcl minimal. This image can be used to execute Packer and Ansible builds in a CI/CD pipeline. 0 In the Pipeline I have trie So I made this small devops lab guide to start with which will include using tools like Git, terraform, ansible, packer,Jenkins, so that you’ll get a very small working model how things are in As a part of my effort to use Infrastructure as Code to define and automate VMware environments, I'm taking a look at Terraform for VMware provisioning. Protocol may be provided in place of * In addition, there are also specific variables that need to be set for each authentication option. I’m sure that, even without From the top of the ansible provisioner documentation:. The msix provider is used to install . Set up the HCP Terraform run task integration with HCP Packer, Packer is an open-source solution created for manufacture machine images among different providers, for example, AWS AMI. 04 - marcinbojko/hv-packer (Hyper-V role is enough). Packer's shell provisioner can run the bash with sudo privileges. However, they have several key differences that set them apart from each other. The main upsides of Ansible are it has better support for cloud and network But Ansible won’t be installed by Packer so you have to do this by yourself with shell provisioner – similar to my Ansible bootstrapping in Dockerfile. Yshay Yaacobi. These published boxes serve as the default boxes for kitchen-vagrant. The first is an automation tool, while Terraform is an infrastructure provisioning tool. Manage VMs and snapshots on vSphere. If you do not set a default value, Packer will fail immediately when you try to run a build if you have not provided the missing variable via the command-line, a var-file, or the environment. It is an orchestration tool. dev0 (ansible/ansible@6ae01d4). hcl ubuntu-22. Your entire windows update strategy for example can be made into a pipeline. 1. Packer's configuration will pass it a shell script to run when it builds the image. 336 verified user reviews and ratings of features, pros, cons, pricing, support and more. You can also use packer with Ansible as the provisioner to pre-bake AMIs, and then use Terraform to spin up infra using those AMIs and update as necessary. Log In / Sign Up; Advertise on This role configures Debian/Ubuntu (either minimal or full install) in preparation for it to be packaged as part of a . Here an example of code for other people. Install ansible (brew install ansible). Michael DeHaan developed ansible in 2012. The Terraform-commands job, which depends on packer-ansible, sets up Terraform and applies a Terraform plan to provision infrastructure. Tymoteusz Paul. Overall I think it is the best choice. 1 which does not work) and A 3rd option that you might want to look in to is using Packer to create you image. x/9. You'll build a Docker image on your local machine without using any paid cloud resources. In this post, we are going to bake an AMI using Packer and do configuration using ansible during the baking process. Ansible is the preferred tool for configuration What's Changed SSH Keys. Fortunately, one of the benefits of packer is the ‘cloud agnosticism’ so theoretically I should be able to test 99% of my new packer and ansible code on my windows 10 laptop using packer’s Hyper-V Builder. This video will show an example of using Ansible ("local") Getting started with Packer azure-arm with Azure DevOps. Ansible is used to set up AMIs, perform tasks like creating db users, and generate config files in S3 buckets from templates. Packer to create your images / vms. What I do is I use Packer to pull the docker image that I want, and then in the provisioning step, I use Chef to get my image in a desired state. You control and define the permissions as to what operations the service principal can perform in Azure. For instance double quotes were being escaped with a \ such in packer_build_name="vm" was being automatically escaped \"vm\" but that escaping \ then got clipped by the batch script to /"vm/". You could do the same thing with Ansible. Ultimately, the right tool depends on the job at hand. The auto provider will select the proper provider if path otherwise it scans all the other providers based on the product_id. I simply cannot sort out getting the ansible provisioner to connect to the container. This could be for application testing, or for specific Windows features. The remaining steps in this tutorial should work no matter what kind of image you built following the guide linked above. Azure provides new users a $200 credit for the first 30 days; after which you will incur costs for VMs built and stored using Packer. Containers mean that you no longer need to configure instances or machines to setup an environment for an app, all that config is in a Dockerfile or packer. Docker: A containerization platform that enables developers to package applications Ansible vs Chef vs Puppet Labs Ansible vs Chef Packer vs Terraform Ansible vs Capistrano vs Chef AWS OpsWorks vs Ansible vs Chef Trending Comparisons Django vs Laravel vs Node. Here's how you can watch and listen to the game: I am trying to provision a machine built with packer, using its ansible provisioner;. 1 When creating CI/CD pipelines for deploying IT infrastructures in onprem or in the cloud the preferred tools are: Ansible; Packer; Terraform; Terraform is usually used for creating virtualized resources (compute, networks, storage,). 0, 2. For this Packer uses which do the provisioning. My Friday brain is really struggling to convert an Ansible command line into the format my Packer . Customizability: Packer is a tool specifically designed for creating machine images, supporting To manage a VM, you can use something as simple as just manual actions over SSH, or can use tools like Ansible, Hashicorp's Packer and Terraform or other automations. I'll put the reboot provisioner in the order it needs to be. To install this plugin, copy and paste this code into your Packer configuration . Use terraform and packer. 0 Windows Server 2012 R2 and AWS S3 Download from Ansible. For those of us who are restricted to rolling our own EC2 instances, the Packer / Ansible / Terraform stack is worth investigating. If you are new to Packer, please read my blog on packer here. Many other blogs use the Build machine image task to build an immutable image. related Visual Studio Code posts. Starting from version 1. on. HCL looks like this: First, we have three provisioners; a shell script that installs Ansible (in our case, for CentOS 6. Provisioning fails to find some roles which I have set in my custom ansible. Define the value of the variable in a separate file, packer/versions. Another difference between JSON and HCL Packer templates is that in JSON packer templates, the "variables" stanza, if used, was always in the same . Overview of Packer and Terraform. Before I get started, I will breakdown the required packages and modules to get this working on you Ansible host machine and Target Proxmox server. The primary difference being that the instances in OCI have a network interface to which the provisioning Could i install several Ansible versions at a single OS and switch them at will? For now we have several releases, say 1. the packer output say that: 2017/03/20 07:56:14 ui: amazon-ebs: amazon-ebs: ERROR! the role 'dochang. That image extended one we used in part 1 and added Ansible installation. json file and, depending on which builders and provisioners you choose, typically has many more configuration files; e. I've been using ansible-base-2. A puppet was developed by Puppet Labs, created by Luke Kanies in 2005. Remote mode means that Ansible will be run on your build host and connect to the container via SSH, so you don’t need a full-blown Ansible installed in Docker container – just a Python Packer and Ansible together. small" image: Automate Windows VM Creation and Configuration in vSphere Using Packer, Terraform and Ansible (Part 1 of 3) In this series of posts I'd like to show how to automate the process of setting up virtual infrastructure consisting of several Windows Server 2016 machines. 04 Star 17. You signed out in another tab or window. Introduction. Although you essentially repackaged an existing image, you should now have a general idea of how Packer works, what templates are and how to validate and build templates into machine images. Packer is lightweight and can be configured in an easy way. Packer vs Terraform: What are the differences? Ansible is great for provisioning software and configuration within virtual machines, but we don't think that Ansible is the right tool for provisioning cloud infrastructure since it's built around the assumption that there is an inventory of remote machines. Other builders and provisioners and builders work fine with AWS and in other use cases. It dynamically creates an Ansible inventory file configured to use SSH, runs an SSH server, executes ansible-playbook, and I'm using packer with the ansible provisioner for quite a while. Whether you are a seasoned practitioner looking to upskill or a company aiming to establish a world-class developer experience, we offer the resources and expertise you need. Terraform is great for creating infrastructure, while Packer is useful for building server images. This article explains the process of automating configuration and change management using Packer to build machine image & Ansible as a provisioner to the Packer script. An example of an AMI Builder using CI/CD with AWS CodePipeline, AWS CodeBuild, Hashicorp Packer and Ansible. Create a Packer image with a user group, a new user with authorized SSH keys, and a Go web app. Review the AWS documentation on running Key features include support for multiple builders, such as VirtualBox and AWS, and automated image builds. 9. Transcript. Review the shell script. ansible localhost -m setup | grep ansible_pkg_mgr. x/OracleLinux 8. Firstly, we created a custom Docker image. Sean: I'm Sean Carolan, solutions engineer with HashiCorp. 18 16thOracle Developer Meetup 2. With a simple line of $ packer build packer. I'll also provide example code and Packer / Ansible. Plugin Management: Packer is a tool used for creating identical machine images for multiple platforms, whereas Vim-Plug is specifically designed for managing plugins within the Vim text editor, enabling easy installation and $ cd ~/projects/packer-ansible-aws $ tree. We’ll use variables, builders, and provisioners. But in the build process I need to execute some curl commands and I am not able to find how to do the same. Report. For our example, we will be using the shell provisioner which allows us to execute shell commands on the instance. It’s worth pointing out that there is some discussion in the packer init is used to download the Packer plugin binaries. Ansible is not an IAC tool. Step 3 - Using Ansible to provision nginx. However we do need to use Windows for a couple of purposes. We also recently adopted Packer to build our machine images, to allow them to be defined in code (and therefore within Here is the GitHub url for Packer and shell code and Terraform to deploy server . Below, we compare Ansible, Terraform and Vagrant, diving into their pros and cons and potential use cases. CT. This was almost three years ago so it may have matured and gotten easier. The script for this tutorial updates the default instance software, installs necessary apps, and creates a user with your SSH key created above. 3 and 1. On the builder section for the shell provisioner you will find the following directives: region: The Region where the Docker vs Packer: What are the differences? Introduction. ansible - The Packer provisioner runs Ansible playbooks. The image will be built on Ansible structure. Access the APPGitH Immutable vs Mutable: Packer promotes the concept of immutable infrastructure, where machine images are built once and deployed multiple times without any modifications. For example, Ansible can automatically: Update and maintain thousands of servers Deploy a complex webapp with many pieces Be used as the provisioner in a We use packer to generate new machine images for multiple platforms on every change to our Configuration Management tools like Chef/Puppet/Ansible It's act single tool for Image building for Multi-provider like AWS/Azure/GCP Helps to achieve Dev/Prod Parity Packer itself doesn't have a state like Terraform. Packer is an open source tool for creating identical Virtual Machine (VM) images for multiple platforms from a single source configuration. These two tools are our only open source offerings without The <powershell> and </powershell> tags at the top and bottom of the file instruct the instance to execute the script using PowerShell. An Azure service principal is a security identity that you can use with apps, services, and automation tools like Packer. bash_profile). packer packer-plugin hyperv Updated Aug 9, 2024; Go; EtienneDeneuve / kubernetes_hyperv Star 18. Chef - Build, destroy and rebuild servers on any public or private cloud. Infra as Code with Packer, Ansible and Terraform. json I've asked a semi-similar question before, but this is specifically about Packer alternatives. I've always used Packer, and haven't really had a Skip to main content. 4 is still around. x/RockyLinux 8. Ansible: Ansible is a configuration management tool that focuses on automation and By the end, you should have a Packer-built image on your Linode account. References. In this article, several new concepts were introduced. Packer Build Failures: Packer was unable to locate the target due to a missing configuration. With YAML as a common interface, interfacing with other languages is very straightforward. box file for Vagrant/VirtualBox or Vagrant/Vmware_desktop deployment using Packer. I want to use the latest packer version because I want to use the Shared Image Gallery with packer. The IT standard industry would use terraform to setup everything --- which can also be done with Ansible --- then use Ansible to update/change whatever is needed within the VMs To manage a VM, you can use something as simple as just manual actions over SSH, or can use tools like Ansible, Hashicorp's Packer and Terraform or other automations. Support me. /roles Not everyone's scripts will cause a reboot - the rebooting process for some (like in my case) can happen via a native packer reboot command. The ansible Packer provisioner runs Ansible playbooks. AWS EC2 Image Builder vs HashiCorp Packer - FAQs About. They perform very similar tasks, making it confusing to decide which one to use in a given situation. Packer does not replace configuration management like Ansible or Chef. ssh and . 0] results in {"houdini_major_version_list":[19]} because the float automatically drops the . Read more. However, I would prefer to be able to reference the existing inventory file which contains the set of Ansible is a radically simple IT automation engine that automates cloud provisioning, configuration management, application deployment, intra-service orchestration, and many other IT needs. Create a VMware vSphere template using Packer and provision a virtual machine (VM) from that template using Terraform. Some time ago, I published running Ansible playbooks using Systems Manager blog when the first version of the AWS Systems Manager (SSM) document was released, which enabled support for Ansible. Ansible package module autodetect your OS default package manager (e. You can also use <script></script> tags to enclose any commands that you would normally run in a Command Prompt window. The fact environment variable which stores is "ansible_pkg_mgr". Packer has a lot of provisioner available! Your favorite server provisioner is probably supported. 0+ is required for new cpu architecture support Difference Between Ansible vs Puppet vs Chef. HashiCorp Packer is an open-source tool designed to automate the creation of identical machine images for multiple platforms from a single source configuration. This ensures consistency and eliminates configuration drift. Why we prefer immutable servers in our DevOps practice, and how the Packer / Ansible / Terraform Type: ansible. We are going to use Packer as a provisioner and Ansible for configuration management to deploy a Python/Flask API to AWS to create an Amazon Machine Image Also it allows me to compensate for certain differences in the way Ansible is integrated with both Packer and Vagrant. You switched accounts on another tab or window. json, we are able to extract elements from terrafom and ansible so that we build up AMI with the click of a button. Remote mode means that Ansible will be run on your build host and connect to the container via SSH, so you don’t need a full-blown Ansible installed in Docker container – just a Python This Video walks through below steps. Blog Default Environmental Variables. Inside Packer file are keys defined. In HCL, it can exist in its own file if Provision infrastructure with Packer. Azure uses a combination of OAuth and Active Directory to Here's example functions you can add to your profile (. In this article, I will give a brief intro to Terraform, talk about how it can help in managing your enterprise environments, as well as how it's different than Ansible. hcl is in HCL, we can read it from Terraform: For detailed instructions on how to install Packer, see this Getting Started guide. Here's what we're doing in a nutshell: Like many other companies that are deploying their applications to the cloud, the majority of our estate uses Linux. Trending Comparisons Django vs Laravel vs Node. Combine this with autoscaling groups, and a tool like harness, and it can all fit together very nicely. I have used Puppet, Chef, Ansible, and Salt. 5 and Ansible versions 2. Provision infrastructure with Packer. Ansible Provisioner Issues: Ansible couldn’t find the path to the playbook because an incorrect path was specified in the Packer template. The Ansible: ansible-playbook playbook. * via python virtual environment. Then in %post set the password not to expire). You can't do packer output AMI ID. I am currently using Packer and I really like it. If you are using multiple OS in your environment, then instead of specifying package manager you should use I don't find solution. Playbooks and Roles can be uploaded from your local machine (In the ks I add in ansible-provsioning-user and the encrypted password and wheel group. This is the first command that should be executed. Our First Packer Template. 11. However, in the case of Kubernetes, security and multi-host networking need to be Terraform to build a Jenkins VM in Azure based on the Packer image. packer validate is used to validate the syntax and configuration of the template. In addition to being able to specify custom environmental variables using the environment_vars configuration, the provisioner automatically defines certain commonly useful environmental variables: PACKER_BUILD_NAME is set to the name of the build that Packer is running. Automate Windows VM Creation and Configuration in vSphere Using Packer, Terraform and Ansible (Part 1 of 3) In this series of posts I'd like to show how to automate the process of setting up virtual infrastructure consisting of several Windows Server 2016 machines. That would be a more fair comparison. Ansible 2. Ansible is great for provisioning software and configuration within virtual machines, but we don't think that re: packer does not require a Dockerfile-- but it does require at least one *. Puppet, Chef, Ansible and Salt are IT automation tools. So, I don't use packer in my stack. Packer Builds AMI with Ansible provisioner2. Read the Packer documentation for more information. related Ansible posts. git Packer with AMI build #Pac I don't find solution. Prior to running this role via Packer, you need to make sure Ansible is installed via a docker run < args > mdmansur/packer-ansible:latest < command > Running a build: The easiest way to run a command that references a configuration with one or more template files, is to mount a volume for the local workspace. As an example take our current code for creating a LXC container and configuring some basic settings. - awslabs/ami-builder-packer Ansible vs Kubernetes. There is another solution with simpler usage of 2 provisioner together. All in all that’s the gist. Ansible has no way to detect server drift unless you pay for Ansible tower. I'm using only ansible. 1, and 1. 1 th 강인호 inho. 1 and latest 2. Packer then connects to the newly created VM via SSH. In fact, when building images, Packer is able to use tools like Ansible or Chef to install software onto the image. The goal of this tutorial is to get a Starting from version 1. Building custom ansible station with lots of checks right now fails in my tryouts. I never got to the bottom of exactly why this causes Like many other companies that are deploying their applications to the cloud, the majority of our estate uses Linux. Set up HCP Terraform run task for HCP Packer. You could also check what I'm trying to integrate Ansible with Packer to configure a Windows Client. Both tools are adept at provisioning new cloud infrastructure and configuring application components as needed. 1 and above, Packer inserts an additional --extra-vars argument for the "default extra variables", which means that two --extra-vars arguments are passed to Ansible. ├── packer │ └── provisioners │ ├── ansible │ └── scripts └── src └── application 6 directories, 0 files Step 3: Create Packer Templates. I have a role in provisioner playbook, packer will download it but won't install it. 4. js vs Spring Boot Flyway vs Liquibase AWS CodeCommit vs Bitbucket vs GitHub Ansible vs Chef vs Puppet Labs Packer vs Terraform AWS OpsWorks vs Chef vs Puppet Labs Ansible vs Puppet Labs vs Salt Chef vs Fabric vs Puppet Labs. The instructions on this page assume that you are familiar with Packer. Let me share my current docker run < args > mdmansur/packer-ansible:latest < command > Running a build: The easiest way to run a command that references a configuration with one or more template files, is to mount a volume for the local workspace. Ansible is a Python-based IT system configuration automation tool that is roughly comparable to Chef and Puppet in the server world and Nornir in the networking world. Packer vs Yocto: What are the differences? Introduction. Also the single quotes in the line 11 needed to be This article will provide a sequential workflow for automating the creation of an AWS environment using various infrastructure automation technologies. Summary. Create Dockerfile. g yum, apt) from existing facts. Running from Azure Pipelines: Ubuntu-Latest Python 3. *NOTE: Vagrant 2. See the section on authentication above for more information. I'm based out of Austin, Texas. We’re going to be talking about a In this tutorial, we will consider an example, which builds an AMI using Packer and Ansible. This means that the ansible target (ansible_host) is local host but with a different port and then this forwarded to the correct host. HashiCorp Packer automates the creation of any type of machine image, including Docker images. To install The ansible-local Packer provisioner configures Ansible to run on the machine by Packer from local Playbook and Role files. I haven’t touched any configuration management tool in more than 3 years. Packer automates VM creation. I also use masterless with packer when bulding AMIs. 5, 1. 04/Ubuntu 22. 9M views. Packer is an open-source solution created for manufacture machine images among different providers, for example, AWS AMI. Code Issues Pull requests Quick setup of a K8S Cluster in Hyper V server. Custom Software & IT Read on DevOps tools comparison – Docker vs Ansible vs Chef vs Kubernetes vs Puppet to make things easier for you. 4 for Ubuntu, but the latest is 2. hcl -var-file vsphere. We can validate that Ansible is mapped correctly by running which ansible and then run ansible --version. cfg file as follows: [defaults] stdout_callback = yaml retry_files_enabled = False vault_password_file = . Requirements: Ansible Host: Community-general Collections package via ansible-galaxy; pip for python Ansible is a powerful tool because it lets you handle many complicated tasks with minimal effort. ansible packer wsl dsc hyperv Updated Jun 7, 2019; PowerShell; heizo / packer-ubuntu-20. The packer-ansible job sets up Packer and Ansible, and builds an Amazon Machine Image (AMI). Shared insights. 8.  and ansible is better for configuring that infrastructure (packages, patches, app configs, etc). crt, would be the same in both packer and docker Summary. 04 base, and has NGINX installed. The advantage here is that golden images remove inconsistency if you're launching dozens or hundreds of servers. For an app where there is minimal load and security/reliability concern, VMs are still a great option that provide a lot of value for the buck It dynamically creates an Ansible inventory file configured to use SSH, runs an SSH server, executes ansible-playbook, and marshals Ansible plays through the SSH server to the machine being provisioned by Packer. pkr. Although this article title contains multiple When creating CI/CD pipelines for deploying IT infrastructures in onprem or in the cloud the preferred tools are: Ansible; Packer; Terraform; Terraform is usually used for creating virtualized resources (compute, networks, storage,). appx, Ansible, like chef and puppet, is completely outdated now. However, the Packer image used in the examples to follow has the label packer-linode-image-1, runs on an Ubuntu 20. ResourceManagement. It also maps your . I have already tried "localhost" and then some ansible variables like "{{ ansible_host }}" (returning 127. AWS) as a In this comparison, we will highlight the key differences between Packer and Vim-Plug. mounts below files to packer_ansible_inspec_terraform_aws - A demo application using Packer, Ansible, InSpec and Terraform on AWS helm - The Kubernetes Package Manager Chocolatey - Chocolatey - the package manager for Windows To manage a VM, you can use something as simple as just manual actions over SSH, or can use tools like Ansible, Hashicorp's Packer and Terraform or other automations. The workflow is triggered on push events to the main Packer is an open source tool for creating identical machine images for multiple platforms from a single source configuration. In part 1 of my series on Declarative Docker Enterprise, I describe Compare HashiCorp Packer vs Ansible. AWS) as a Let's discuss the difference between Ansible and Puppet, how these tools are best used, what their pros and cons are, how they differ from their competitive peers, does one tool has an edge over the other, and which of them is a better use. Getting started with Packer azure-arm with Azure DevOps. This release changes the Lastly, Ansible uses SSH to connect to the node servers, making it a lot easier to configure. Gallery. g. Net Developer CBD, SOA But those who said Ansible is bad, damn, I wonder if they use batch script to manage things hahaha Ansible is a powerful tool ONLY if you know how to use it. Packer is usually used for creating Windows and Linux VM base images. The environment variables can be further leveraged for Docker, Ansible, and Packer. The structure generally follows the approach in "Setting Ansible variables based on the environment". pkrvars. From there, we use Terraform to deploy QA This blog will follow the journey of deploying a service of VMs in vSphere using Packer, Ansible and Jenkins and detail some of the obstacles we encountered on the way. I would You signed in with another tab or window. For our example, we will be using the shell provisioner which allows us to execute shell From the top of the ansible provisioner documentation:. Packer, HashiCorp’s powerful open-source tool, empowers you to automate the process of creating machine images for various platforms. You can install it via brew install packer. Build with Packer. Collection of labs using Packer and Ansible to automate VM image creation and management. Dismiss alert I now wish to use one or more playbooks from the Packer Ansible plugin to perform the same steps. 01. yml -e @env/users/user01. 04. Dealing with DevOps. This page explains how to use Packer and Cloud Build to create a VM image for use on Compute Engine. The principal difference is that a new AMI requires you to spinup a new server. Software Engineer · Nov 29, 2018 | 31 upvotes · 3. An open-source software provisioning, configuration management, and application-deployment tool comes with its own declarative language. creates a virtual machine with Ubuntu 22. Let us discuss the differences between Ansible and Kubernetes. Finally, I can think about how to organize the environment variables for better re-use and consistency across tools and environments. Don't mix methods. Code Issues Ansible and Terraform work at different levels. It only manages to automate installation and configuration to all the servers. Ansible primarily uses YAML for its playbooks and Python under the hood. We also recently adopted Packer to build our machine images, to allow them to be defined in code (and therefore within Packer will use a provided command-line var, var-file, or environment var if it exists, but if not Packer will fall back to this default value. For an app where there is minimal load and security/reliability concern, VMs are still a great option that provide a lot of value for the buck Puppet, Chef, Ansible and Salt are IT automation tools. packer-rhel (which configures RHEL/CentOS for Vagrant), and finally a cleanup shell script that clears off unused space to save a few MB in This is where Packer and Ansible come into play. /roles While Packer is not closed source it is oriented towards multi-cloud and hybrid clouds providing more freedom, configurability, and extensive hardware support. HashiCorp Tools – Webblog App Series YouTube Playlist; Webblog App Part 4 This demonstrates the interfacing between Packer and the Ansible provisioner is now correct for passing a list type variable. Both tools help in saving time when creating rich, secure, and reliable machine images in a scalable manner. Issue with Packer ansible provisioner for Windows 8. You can handle the reboot in packer so that it's abstracted as packer aims to be - and handle waiting for the OS to become available again Next steps. I'm out of this fair Bay Area of San Francisco. 10 ansible [core 2. hcl: service-a-img-name = "service-a__main-3" Build the image with: $ packer build -var-file=versions. Automating Proxmox with Ansible. A quick look at some basic Ansible Automation for Proxmox. So, you need to have KVM installed on your local, or wherever you’re building this image the output image format will be qcow2, which is a QEMU image. Before you begin. Plugin Management: Packer is a tool used for creating identical machine images for multiple platforms, Ansible is an IT automation tool. Ansible is well-suited for tasks like distributing public keys to servers. 0 AWS provision with ansible. While Packer is lightweight, runs on every major operating system, and is highly performant, creating machine images for multiple platforms in parallel. Ansible to configure the Jenkins VM by running the Docker container. m. By having everything baked in to an image, it's easy to rollback by simply targeting Packer is HashiCorp’s second project and a big shift from Vagrant’s built in scripted Ruby to the glorious world of compiled GoLang. It can configure systems, deploy software, and orchestrate more advanced IT tasks such as continuous deployments or Ansible is a procedural tool, meaning that each Ansible playbook defines the steps to transform your infrastructure or configuration into what it should look like. Terraform vs Ansible Similarities At a high level, Terraform and Ansible share commonalities in their automation capabilities through different stages of the infrastructure lifecycle. Top industries using this technology. This helps in creating identical servers in case things go wrong. In addition: Ansible - Radically simple configuration-management, application deployment, task-execution, and multi-node orchestration engine. Using a host in I have the following role in my Ansible playbook to determine the installed version of Packer and conditionally install it if it doesn't match the version of a local variable:--- # detect packer version - name: determine packer version shell: /usr/local/bin/packer -v || true register: packer_installed_version - name: install packer cli tools unarchive: src: Packer helps bake configuration into the machine image during image creation time. Hyper-V Generation 2 Packer Templates for Windows 2019/2022, AlmaLinux 8. 0 has deprecated the “ssh” from ansible_ssh_user, ansible_ssh_pass, Salt also has other features like the reactor that are really powerful. pkrvars100GBdisk. Ansible. Using automation provides a powerful way to ensure your virtual machines, containers, and hosts are configured and managed across the environment consistentl Ansible vs Terraform: What are the differences? Every growing startup or tech organization wants to automate apps and IT infrastructure. 10. Ansible has to run the installation and configuration programs on the servers one at a time. 1. 7, Packer supports a new packer init command allowing automatic installation of Packer plugins. Immutable infrastructure with Packer, Ansible and Terrarform Read less. # # First, create a new instance # - hosts: localhost tasks: # Create a new instance with an AMI - name: Create a new instance ec2: aws_access_key: "xxx" aws_secret_key: "xxx" region: "xxx" key_name: "xxx" instance_type: "t2. r/devops A chip A close button. Chenwingu Challenges Encountered. Share. png) Awesome! Fairly painless to install. With Packer, you can codify everything that is required to create a machine image, making the process highly reproducible and easy to share with team Currently when running extended builds (Packer/Ansible based) on Windows we have found that WinRM has errors so frequently as to be unusable and have had to fall back to running some large build jobs manually as a result. Pros include faster image creation and consistency across different environments. Architecture and Purpose: Docker is a containerization platform that allows developers to Packer vs Vim-Plug: What are the differences? Introduction. Salt is the least popular, and the least talked about. Reload to refresh your session. It has gained wide acceptance as a network automation system, due in packer_ansible_inspec_terraform_aws - A demo application using Packer, Ansible, InSpec and Terraform on AWS helm - The Kubernetes Package Manager Chocolatey - Chocolatey - the package manager for Windows Is there a best practice for running an ansible playbook/role against a container when building an image with packer locally? My setup is a mac m1. This video will show an example of using Ansible ("local") to provision a server as well. Sean: So today we're going to present to you our musings on the subject of how our tools work better Ansible vs Terraform: What are the differences? Every growing startup or tech organization wants to automate apps and IT infrastructure. By either writing code (as in Puppet) or data (as in Ansible) you can automate most tasks. Note. At TeKanAid, our mission is to empower platform engineers and organizations to build scalable, efficient internal developer platforms. This workshops is a collection of labs using a selection of the tooling that we commonly see to automate processes around virtual machine image creation. packer build takes a template and runs the build to generate artifacts. In that blog, I discussed the tight integration of SSM with other Terraform Building VMs in Azure based on Packer Images; Ansible to Configure an Azure VM; The Secret Zero Problem and Vault Secure Introduction; Vault AppRole; A deeper understanding of Ansible vs Jenkins vs Terraform and how each tool is used. I'm trying to move to ansible-core-2. For more information on the other methods of delivering provisioning instructions to your image, visit the Packer provisioners documentation. Packer provides a multitude of provisioners, including popular configuration management tools like Ansible, Puppet, and Chef. Use immutable images or config management. 5. A subset of templates are built and published to the bento org on Vagrant Cloud. It automates configuration The Green Bay Packers will face the Houston Texans on Thursday at Lambeau Field. 4, which is old. With my involvement in open source I am a contributer of a few projects which utilize Vagrant and optionally Packer. Create a file named Dockerfile with the following contents: FROM hashicorp/packer USER root RUN apk add-v--update--no-cache aws-cli ansible jq openssh bash curl py3-boto3 sudo # Copy Packer Arifacts COPY. js Bootstrap vs Foundation vs Material-UI Node. Tested and reproduced with all combinations between Packer versions 1. small" image: Packer VS kubernetes To manage a VM, you can use something as simple as just manual actions over SSH, or can use tools like Ansible, Hashicorp's Packer and Terraform or other automations. Create a customized image using Packer, then deploy this image using Terraform. Packer then uses a build block to call the ansible provisioner and runs playbook. 04 LTS - GCE instance, with only the minimal software installs required to run the repro While both Terraform and Ansible Automation Platform are popular automation offerings—and favorite DevOps tools—the solutions have very different capabilities. After some investigating the issue was how things were being escaped. Terraform is a provisioning tool and Ansible is a configuration management tool and they work very well together. In this comparison, we will highlight the key differences between Packer and Vim-Plug. For an app where there is minimal load and security/reliability concern, VMs are still a great option that provide a lot of value for the buck Packer itself doesn’t do any provisioning by itself - except uploading files to the machine - but rather uses other provisioning tools like a simple Shell or Ansible by means of provisioners. HashiConf 2024 Now streaming live from Boston! Attend for free. One extra info about when to use Packer: I prefer small bare minimum images too and then use Ansible to set up everything, but if Ansible takes 2h, that's where tools like Packer some into In this article we are going to look at Ansible and Packer and how these tools are used to automate the application of configuration states aka configuration and change Deep Dive: Using Packer and Ansible to create a golden VMware image for Docker Enterprise - part 1. In this tutorial, you launched a Docker container and saved it as an image. Ansible is a simple way to do that. Another good aspect about packer is the ability to run packer validate against I am trying to build my application using packer and ansible integration provisioner using GCP . It dynamically creates an Ansible inventory file configured to use SSH, runs an SSH server, executes ansible If you haven’t taken Packer for a spin yet - you absolutely should. 04 cloud image, using QEMU and KVM. 6M views. FWIW, I have been using Packer to create and provision instances using the Ansible plugin for instance in OCI. Identical for both the controller and the target: Ubuntu 18. 11 works just The ansible-local Packer provisioner will execute ansible in Ansible's "local" mode on the remote/guest VM using Playbook and Role files that exist on the guest VM. We can now create a packer json file that will be used to build an AMI image. This tutorial will teach you how to create a Packer image with all of the common dependencies you would need for deploying a web application, and build that image in Collection of labs using Packer and Ansible to automate VM image creation and management. More Related Content. It's pretty dang easy to do, back before we were containerized I even got it working over SSH for windows machines because WinRM was wonky at best. Now that we have configured our files, it’s time to build with Packer. This means Install packer. Ansible, Puppet, and Chef are configuration tools. In this article, we will explore the key differences between Docker and Packer. 4] packer 1. By using Packer and Ansible, with orchestration using Jenkins, it is possible to reach this level of automation. packer init is used to download the Packer plugin binaries. json file as the builds and builders. Packer allows you to pre-build golden images to deploy using Terraform, and supports a number of provisioning processes. com/sbrTechWorld/packer-shell. Packer easily sits into your CI pipeline, so you can have new software deployed and ready anytime. First you need copy your script file from local machine to remote with file provisioner, then run it with shell provisioner. We will use a simple Java Web Application (WAR) for demonstration. . When using the Ansible plugin with a proxy (default) setup to communicate over SSH to a target VM/machine, in previous versions of the plugin, we'd generate RSA-2048 keys by default, unless keys were specified manually using the ssh_host_key_file and the corresponding ssh_authorized_key_file values in a template. Business Services. Remote mode means that Ansible will be run on your build host and connect to the container via SSH, so you don’t need a full-blown Ansible installed in Docker container – just a Python interpreter. Status of Packer WinRM connection_plugin for Ansible hashicorp/packer#6453; Ansible, WinRM, shell-local and IP address hashicorp/packer#6744; I've ultimately tried to get Packer to use our own connection plugin to avoid these issues but at the time I was told it went against the design of Packer so that didn't go anywhere. From v1. pkvars. OS. Packer and Yocto are both tools commonly used in software development for building and deploying custom operating system images. What is more, Packer allows using a configuration management tool such as Ansible to install packages and required software on a particular machine image during its creation. This video will show an example of using Ansible ("local") Packer can use shell, Ansible, etc to do the actual provisioning. kang@oracle. yml --ask-vault --ask-become My attempted Packer block: Using ansible within packer is easier than making bash scripts for everything, because why reinvent the wheel. We saw how the terraform and ansible integration works very well. VMImage Packer supports building Virtual Hard Disks (VHDs) and Managed Images in Azure Resource Manager. 1 which does not work) and "{{ I am trying to provision a machine built with packer, using its ansible provisioner;. As removing any possible differences is key in avoiding subtle bugs in testing vs. . Every patch Tuesday, packer will roll up an AMI with the latest updates after ansible or whatever provisions it, and you have a fresh base AMI to deploy to and test. This is most useful when Packer is making multiple builds and you @coolrazor007. No need for ansible. But Ansible won’t be installed by Packer so you have to do this by yourself with shell provisioner – similar to my Ansible bootstrapping in Dockerfile. This creates shortcuts to quicly run commands with your current directory mapped as working directory in the docker image. We may use the Ansible vault to store secrets or put them into SSM Parameter Store. My problem with the task is that it uses packer version 1. 04/Ubuntu 24. This blog will help you decide which tool you should pick to solve a particular problem. x, it simply installs the EPEL repository and installs ansible via yum), then an Ansible playbook that calls the role geerlingguy. Ansible is the preferred tool for configuration Just for everyone's clarification; the ansible provisioner does not require that sshd be run on the machine being provisioned; SSH is only used to communicate between Ansible and Packer, the ansible provisioner then translates SSH commands to Packer communicator commands to actually talk to the node. All that being said, this post isn’t going to be a dive into using Packer. Consider buying me a coffee if Packer is a HashiCorp tool that builds machine images. Tutorial. If I am trying to build my application using packer and ansible integration provisioner using GCP . At present, I have resorted to passing arguments via the "--extra-vars" directive; for a limited number of variables, this is acceptable. SSM vs Ansible. Dylan: I'm Dylan Silva, the product manager for Ansible Engine or Ansible Core, or just Ansible project—whatever you want to call it. , ansible uses yaml files for its configuration. x Ubuntu 20. vault roles_path = . OS is installed. In this blog, we compare the two tools, identify their differences and similarities. zkni zsf zxlkkqq cjqon dbzwvj ocgm zjqjy yobp akyqof vflc