Vagrant Users Boston - Meetup - 2014-04-30

This presentation offered a high level introduction to utilizing Packer to build base boxes for Vagrant. Also included in the talk was Racker, a Ruby DSL wrapper for Packer, as well as how Yieldbot wraps its use of Packer/Racker into an internal project called Planet Express.

Transcript

1. Vagrant Boxes: Packer Style Anthony Spring Minister of DevOps Culture - Yieldbot @devopsanthony The opinions expressed here represent my own and not those of my employer. April 30th, 2014 Vagrant Users Boston - Meetup
2. What is Packer? “Packer is a tool for creating identical machine images for multiple platforms from a single source configuration.”
3. Why use Packer? • Trust • Repeatability • Fast • Flexibility
4. Packer 101
5. Variables Allows for specifying user defined configuration from the command line, environment variables or file.
6. Builders Define the high level configuration settings for the box that is getting built. DigitalOcean, Docker, EC2, GCE, OpenStack, QEMU, VirtualBox, VMWare
7. Provisioners A set of ‘scripts’ that get applied to each an image. Ansible, Chef Solo, File Uploads, Salt, Shell Scripts
8. Provisioner Script
9. Post Processors Determines the type of output artifact generated and where that artifact is placed. Docker Import, Docker Push, Vagrant, vSphere
10. Putting it all together • Build several images in parallel. • Target specific builders (inclusive/exclusive). • Everything used to build the box is in source control. • Its really freaking sweet!
12. Packer 201 • Feedback loop — headless vs non-headless • Image Layering — building off of existing images • Image Management — how to manage what went into the box • Bake vs Fry — division of labor between Packer and Vagrant • Testing — get your ServerSpec on!
13. Packer @ Yieldbot • Primarily CentOS/RHEL • Build universal images for VirtualBox, VMware Fusion, VMware ESXI and EC2 AMI. • Ability to provision with Chef • Ability to test images before shipping
14. Evolution • Created a single primary Packer template • Change to the base template — required changes to all of its derivatives. • Variables could only take us so far. • Not very easy to merge the Packer JSON template format.
15. Racker • Determinant merging of templates • DRY templates • Provide a method of knocking out hash values • Ability to add comments • Its just ruby!
16. Racker CLI
17. Packer Snippet Racker Template
21. Planet Express “Make building and deploying boxes so easy a caveman could do it.”
22. Planet Express CLI v1
24. Box Build Pipeline • Create the candidate box with Packer • Push box to image store • Smoke test base role provision with integration tests • Every role provision with integration tests • Promote box
25. Pipeline Tools • Jenkins • Packer • Racker • Planet Express • Vagrant • Chef • ServerSpec • KitchenCI
26. Questions?
27. Credits • http://www.packer.io/ • https://github.com/misheska/basebox-packer • https://github.com/garethr/packer-serverspec- example • https://github.com/aspring/racker