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96 lines
2.4 KiB
Markdown
96 lines
2.4 KiB
Markdown
---
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title: "Snapshot Creation with Packer"
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date: 2020-05-08T22:31:40-04:00
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draft: false
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tags: []
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medium_enabled: true
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---
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[Packer](https://www.packer.io/) is a tool to create automated machine images in both local virtual machine / container environments, as well as a variety of cloud platforms. My current cloud platform of choice is [Digital Ocean](https://www.digitalocean.com/), so this post will explain how to set up Packer with it. Though you can likely find your platform of choice on their [docs](https://www.packer.io/docs/builders/) page
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In this post I am going to use the beta configuration language of HCL2. This requires a Packer version of at least 1.5.
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## Variables
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First let us set up a variables file which we will later reference. This makes it easy to keep your main Packer configuration files in Git, while not committing your API key.
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Create a file called `variables.auto.pkrvars.hcl`. Here is some example variables and values that I put in mine.
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```
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base_system_image = "ubuntu-20-04-x64"
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region = "nyc3"
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size = "512mb"
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do_token = "DOTOKENHERE" # Secret
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```
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Then we need to create `variables.pkr.hcl` that define the types of each of these variables
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```
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variable "do_token" {
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type = string
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}
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variable "base_system_image" {
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type = string
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}
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variable "region" {
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type = string
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}
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variable "size" {
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type = string
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}
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```
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## Provisioning
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Once the system is up and running we can use a [variety of tools](https://www.packer.io/docs/provisioners/) that setup the image.
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- Ansible
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- Chef
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- Powershell
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- etc.
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I'll use a simple bash script as an example
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```bash
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#!/bin/bash
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apt update
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apt upgrade -y
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```
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## Piecing it together
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Finally let us create a `do.pkr.hcl` file that contains the following information
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```
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source "digitalocean" "web" {
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api_token = var.do_token
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image = var.base_system_image
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region = var.region
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size = var.size
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ssh_username = "root"
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snapshot_name = "packer-example"
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}
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build {
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sources = [
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"source.digitalocean.web",
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]
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provisioner "shell" {
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scripts = [ "setup.sh" ]
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}
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}
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```
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Assuming all the files we've just created are in the same directory, Packer will automatically recognize where the value for `var.do_token` lives. We can then run packer to build the image
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```bash
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packer build .
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```
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This sets up a snapshot called `packer-example` which we can later spin up and use! Keep in mind that it does a small amount of money to store images on DigitalOcean.
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