Packer Configuration For Creating an AMI

Packer is a free and open source tool for creating golden images for multiple platforms from a single source configuration.

Use Cases

• Automated image builds
• Integrate with Terraform

Getting Started

After cloning this project, you can start editing the configurations by modifying machine-image.pkr.hcl.

To proceed, you need to specify your vpc_id and subnet_id. You can retrieve these values using the AWS CLI:

aws ec2 describe-vpcs --query 'Vpcs[].VpcId' --region ap-southeast-1

aws ec2 describe-subnets --filters Name=vpc-id,Values=<your-vpc-id> --query 'Subnets[].SubnetId' --region ap-southeast-1

These commands will return your VPC and subnet IDs. After obtaining them, update the machine-image.pkr.hcl file accordingly.

variable "vpc_id" {
  type        = string
  description = "Target VPC ID for building the AMI"
  default     = "vpc-****" # Replace with your VPC ID
}

variable "subnet_id" {
  type        = string
  description = "Public subnet ID for temporary instance"
  default     = "subnet-****" # Replace with your public subnet ID
}

Once you've made the changes, validate your configuration using:

packer init machine-image.pkr.hcl

Then

packer validate machine-image.pkr.hcl

Then, run the below command to create an image to your configured provider account.

packer build -var "infra_env=staging" machine-image.pkr.hcl

You can change infra_env whatever you want.

Check out our Official Documentation for more details.