Introduction to HCP Packer

HashiCorp Packer allows you to codify and automate build pipelines for machine images in multiple formats. But how do you make these images discoverable and ensure only the correct versions are deployed to production?

HCP Packer, part of the HashiCorp Cloud Platform, provides a registry that tracks your image metadata and presents it to downstream processes through an API. Together with the Packer data source in the HCP provider for Terraform, this forms the foundation of a multi-cloud golden image pipeline to automate the lifecycle of images from build through deployment.

0:00 - Intro
0:10 - What is Packer?
1:54 - Publish image metadata to the HCP Packer registry
4:14 - Multi-layer image pipelines
6:12 - Integrate with Terraform for deployment
7:29 - Image versioning and revocation
11:46 - Identify preferred versions with release channels

HashiCorp provides infrastructure automation software for multi-cloud environments, enabling enterprises to unlock a common cloud operating model to provision, secure, connect, and run any application on any infrastructure. HashiCorp open source tools Vagrant, Packer, Terraform, Vault, Consul, Nomad, Boundary, and Waypoint allow organizations to deliver applications faster by helping enterprises transition from manual processes and ITIL practices to self-service automation and DevOps practices.


#Packer #InfrastructureAsCode #Terraform

[tensegrity]

Armon, This is an ingenious thought process by you. Going after the build process which is the root of the security vulnerability at the kernel level and hardening it is a master stroke. Secondly, in this Cloud self-service world we can automate this pipeline of version control and release channels and revocation of base image via the registry is masterful. That gives us control at the metadata level and tightens our provisioning security policy.
I do want to see something similar around DNS vulnerabilities and how we can harden those entry points from an attacker getting access. Thats a different problem to solve.

[boshkovboban]

So, the whole benefit over the open-sourced Packer is that introduced Packer Registry where you store the Metadate and control the Image versioning from there, instead doing it from AWS/Azure? In your terraform script instead of reading it from Azure/AWS, you are going to read it from Packer Registry. Any other benefits?

[deckardshaw]

OMG i am goin to write a blog on packer soon