Top 8 Recommended Packer Self-Study Materials! [September 2023]

Master HashiCorp Packer to automate your machine images across multiple platforms - a critical skill to enabling automation in your environments.

This is the most extensive and thorough course on Udemy for learning how to use HashiCorp Packer in your organization. It is the only course that teaches you all about using HCL2 to create your Packer templates, the new standard moving forward. It doesn't matter if you have never used Packer before or have been writing Packer templates in the older JSON style. You'll step away from this course ready to tackle any Packer build.

This course includes in-depth lectures on all of the core HashiCorp Packer components and tons of included labs. You also get access to hands-on labs that you can perform in your own environment, as we believe taking a hands-on approach is the best way to learn. Each lesson includes a mindmap of the topics, a PDF of the slides, and multiple labs to demonstrate the topics at hand.

Beyond getting comfortable with HashiCorp Packer, we're taking it one step further and showing you how to integrate HashiCorp Packer with other automation tools, such as HashiCorp Terraform, HashiCorp Vault, and GitLab CI/CD. We'll demonstrate building images on multiple public cloud platforms, and we'll even show you how to build VMware images using Packer.

We cover a wide variety of topics, including:

• HashiCorp Packer intro and the problems it solves

• Use Cases and Examples

• Writing Packer Templates using HCL2 (the new standard for Packer 1.7+)

• Different Builders

• Using Variables

• Provisioners

• Post-Processors

• Code Organization

• Integrations such as automation pipelines, secrets management, Terraform, and more.

You will get lifetime access to a wealth of content plus all of the labs for your own use. Don't forget that this course also comes with Udemy's 30-day guarantee.

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About HashiCorp Packer

Packer is an open-source tool for creating identical machine images for multiple platforms from a single source configuration. Packer is lightweight, runs on every major operating system, and is highly performant, creating machine images for multiple platforms in parallel.

1. Course Introduction
2. Introduction
3. GitHub Repo for Supporting Files
4. Course Review
5. Course Feedback
6. Introduction to HashiCorp Packer
7. Intro to Packer - Section Overview
8. Why Use Packer?
9. Hello, Packer!
10. Core Components of Packer
11. Installing Packer
12. Demo - Installing Packer
13. The Packer Command Line
14. Hands-On Lab - The Packer Command Line
15. The Packer Workflow
16. Demo - The Packer Workflow
17. Intro to Packer - Section Recap
18. Writing Packer Templates
19. Writing Packer Templates
20. HCL Syntax
21. Hands-On Lab - Converting JSON Templates to HCL
22. Working with Packer's Core Components in HCL
23. Hands-On Lab - Writing Packer Templates
24. Builders
25. Introduction to Builders
26. Demo - Building AWS AMIs with Packer
27. Demo - Building Azure Machine Images with Packer
28. Demo - Building Google Compute Machine Images with Packer
29. Demo - Building VMware Templates with Packer
30. Hands-On Lab - Building Images in Multiple Regions
31. Hands-On Lab - Building Images for Different Operating Systems
32. Hands-On Lab - Building Images in Multiple Clouds
33. Demo - Target Clouds and Build Types using Packer
34. Variables
35. Introduction to Variables
36. Declaring Packer Variables
37. Using Variables in Packer Templates
38. Using Environment Variables
39. Hands-On Lab - Packer Variables
40. Provisioners
41. Introduction to Provisioners
42. Examples of Different Provisioners
43. Useful Features of Provisioners
44. Hands-On Lab - Provisioners
45. Post-Processors
46. Introduction to Post-Processors
47. Examples of Post-Processors
48. Hands-On Lab - Post-Processors
49. Code Organization
50. Code Organization
51. Hands-On Lab - Code Organization
52. Hands-On Lab - Targeting Cloud Builds
53. Troubleshooting Your Packer Builds
54. Hands-On Lab - Packer Debug
55. Hands-On Lab - Packer Breakpoints
56. Packer Integrations
57. Course Review
58. Hands-On Lab - Integrating Packer with Red Hat Ansible
59. Hands-On Lab - Integrating Packer with HashiCorp Terraform
60. Demo - Integrating Packer with HashiCorp Vault's KV v2 Secrets Engine
61. Demo - Integrating Packer with HashiCorp Vault using the AWS Secrets Engine
62. Demo - Integrating Packer with GitLab CI/CD
63. Bonus
64. Bonus

In this course, you'll learn how to turn existing server configuration scripts into a Packer build project which creates a fully-configured machine image that you can use on Amazon's cloud. It's a simple, real-life project that shows you how Packer is REALLY used in the Cloud Infrastructure and DevOps world.

By the time you're done, you'll have automated an image build for a server that hosts a WordPress site.

You will learn:

1. How to install Packer

2. How to create and structure a simple Packer template to build an a machine image on AWS

3. How to think about turning existing commands/procedures into scripts, and how to use those scripts in your Packer workflow.

4. How to create VMs (AWS Instances) from the machine image you created with Packer.

Who Are You?

• You're a Linux, DevOps, Cloud Infrastructure, or Software Engineer who wants to automate server image builds.

• You have some basic command-line skills (Linux, Windows, or OS X).

• You know how to clone a project from GitHub and edit code in a text editor.

• You want to learn more practical DevOps skills.

• You want to automate image builds as a first step to making Infrastructure configuration part of a CI/CD pipeline.

• You're just curious about what a small, but real-world Packer project looks like.

Who am I?

• I've been doing Linux, Cloud Infrastructure, Software Development, and DevOps/SRE for almost 15 years.

• I've taught hundreds of thousands of people tech skills on my YouTube channel.

• I want to teach important skills in a useful, no-BS way that gives you practical skills that you can immediately apply to real-world projects, in job interviews, or to get promoted.

Take a look! I'm excited to see you inside.

1. Introduction
2. Introduction
3. Why Packer? Why Infrastructure as Code?
4. Reading through a Real-Life Packer Project
5. Project Packerfile Overview
6. Packer Primitives and Terminology
7. Packer Template Blocks
8. WordPress Project Code Tour
9. Packerized Project Code Tour
10. Practical Project
11. Installing Packer
12. Creating an SSH Key in AWS EC2
13. Creating an AWS IAM User for Packer
14. The Packer Build
15. Using the AMI to Host a WordPress Site
16. Packer Documentation and Development Resources
17. Useful Packer Plugins
18. Conclusion and Further Projects
19. Packer Learning Project Ideas
20. Conclusion

Deployment is usually one of the aspects that is tackled last when it comes to application development, and until only recently deployment experience for both Developers and Operations teams was very painful.

To this end, DevOps practices have now been adopted quite widely, and in a nutshell, DevOps is the intersection between Development and Operations.

A lot of tools have been created to tackle the pain points of making a deployment and these fall into different categories, like configuration tools, server templating, and Infrastructure as Code to mention a few.

Now in a lot of tutorials and courses, the focus is on learning and using these tools individually without any real world context. This means that you will need to use these different tools together yourself, and this can be difficult to use them in a real world context.

In this course we will be making a hands on deployment of an E-commerce Node API application with a custom SSL domain using a combination of the deployments tools that are available. These include:

• Git Version control

• Linux

• Bash Scripts

• Terraform

• Docker

• Packer

• Continuous Integration - GitHub Actions

• AWS

We're going to use all of these tools together to make an automated deployment without any manual steps such as configuring infrastructure resources in the UI console. We're also going to have the advantage of versioning our infrastructure in Git, which means that should there be any issues we can simply roll back the infrastructure deployed to a previous state very easily.

1. Introduction
2. Introduction to the Course
3. What is DevOps?
4. Terraform: Basics
5. What is Terraform?
6. AWS Setup
7. Install Terraform
8. Resources For This Section
9. Terraform Settings
10. Deploy Server 1
11. Deploy Server 2
12. Create Web Server
13. Create Web Server 2
14. Create Web Server With Variables
15. Terraform: Deploy Cluster of Webservers
16. Resources For This Section
17. Deploy Cluster Of Servers 1
18. Launch Configuration
19. AutoScaling Group Configuration
20. Data Sources
21. Data Sources 2
22. Load Balancer
23. Load Balancer Configuration 1
24. Load Balancer Configuration 2
25. Load Balancer Configuration 3
26. Load Balancer Configuration 4
27. Deploy Cluster Of Servers
28. Terraform: State
29. What is Terraform State?
30. The Need For Remote Backend
31. IMPORTANT! Please read!
32. Create S3 Bucket With Terraform
33. Create DynamoDB with Terraform
34. Use Remote Backend For State
35. Terraform File Structure
36. Terraform: Modules
37. Resources
38. Terraform Modules
39. How to call a Module
40. Module Variables 1
41. Module Variables 2
42. Module Locals
43. Module Output Variables
44. Module Stage Deploy
45. Module Prod Deploy
46. Docker
47. Resources
48. What is Docker?
49. Install Docker
50. Clone API Repo
51. Create Docker File Config
52. Build Docker Image
53. Push Docker Image
54. Packer
55. Resources
56. What is Packer?
57. Install Packer
58. Packer Template Structure
59. Variables
60. Source Block
61. Build Block
62. SSH Key
63. Add More Provisioners
64. Run Packer Build 1
65. Run Packer Build 2
66. Verify Image 1
67. Verify Image 2
68. Verify Image 3
69. CI/CD
70. CI/CD Introduction
71. API Deployment 1
72. IMPORTANT! Please read before starting section!
73. Clone API Files
74. Introduction to GitHub Actions
75. YAML File Initial Setup
76. Add Environments to GitHub Actions
77. Configure Build Triggers
78. CI Jobs Overview
79. Add First Job: API Tests
80. Add Docker Build & Push Job
81. GitHub Actions Docs
82. Add AMI Build Job
83. Deployment Architecture Overview
84. Environment Terraform Resource Config
85. Terraform Module Backend Config
86. Create Terraform Stage & Prod Backend
87. Create Terraform Stage & Prod Backend 2
88. VPC Config
89. Load Balancer Config
90. User Data Config
91. ASG Config 1
92. ASG Config 2
93. Route 53 Domain Management
94. Custom Doman Name 1
95. Custom Domain Name 2
96. Stage Environment Execute Module
97. CloudWatch Role Policy
98. API Deployment 2
99. Add Deploy Job Pipeline
100. Stage Deploy
101. Test Stage API With Postman
102. Prod Deploy 1
103. Prod Deploy 2
104. Prod Deploy 3
105. Deployed Resources
106. Next Steps
107. Wrap Up
108. Bonus Lecture

LEARN A PRODUCTION GRADE PROJECT

This is a unique course designed to help you to create a customized Azure DevOps agents from the ground up. Currently, most software teams that are using Azure DevOps to build their software choose to use Azure-hosted agents as their build server. This comes with a lot of benefits. Many libraries are already installed on these agents so it's quite compatible with most projects' specifications. For every build, you get a new agent that is provisioned and after the build will be destroyed. However, this has its own limitations. Azure Hosted Agents are using a specific type of VM so it is not possible to increase hardware specifications. If your projects also have libraries that are not supported by Azure Hosted agents, you need to install them on the agents. This might not be an issue for projects that have started in recent years, but if you have a legacy code that takes an hour to build then you might start to think about how you can speed up the build process. For such a situation, there are a lot of solutions like reconsidering the architecture of software and so on which is not the scope of this article. In this article, I am going to focus on how you can create a custom self-hosted agent.

CUSTOM SELF HOSTED AGENT

With Azure DevOps, it is possible to create an agent pool and add our own agents. These agents can be your personal laptop, on-premise server, or virtual machine. What we want to do in this course is to see how we can create a fully automated process in which we create a custom Windows image. This gives us the benefit of having an image containing all the applications and settings we need. Additionally, we can provision a virtual machine/virtual machine scale set using this image with desired hardware specifications.

UNDERSTAND THE DESIGN, THEN LEARN HOW TO IMPLEMENT

What makes this course unique is that you understand the design process before you jump into the implementation. It is important to know why we choose certain ways and then learn how to implement it. I walk you through all required steps and you get along with me to implement this solution while watching me coding.

EVERYTHINGS AS CODE

These days it is quite important to have everything as code. It is the same for pipelines. In this course, I am using PowerShell scripts, Packer, Azure DevOps YAML pipelines and Azure ARM templates. So you learn how to use all these tools in a project and I explain everything in detail.

USEFUL FOR VARIOUS PROJECTS

This course if very useful for different purposes. It can help you to learn:

• How to create a customized Windows Image using Packer

• How to create a Virtual Machine Set using customized image

• How to use Azure Keyvault for secrets in the Azure DevOps YAML pipelines

And so many other things you would need to know when you implement projects like these.

YOU HAVE MY FULL SUPPORT

During the course, I am always available to help you with your questions and perhaps problems you are facing. The aim of this course is to equip you with enough knowledge to understand the CI/CD concept and additionally get familiar with Azure DevOps tools. With these, you are able to start creating your pipelines in different scenarios and bring added value to your projects and your companies.

1. Introduction
2. Introduction & Design Concepts
3. Getting started with Packer
4. Install packer
5. Prepare Packer template
6. Create a Azure resource group
7. Create Azure service principle
8. Configure the authentication in Packer template
9. Build the template
10. Validate the built image
11. Phase1 - Create a Custom Windows Image with Packer & Azure DevOps YAML pipelines
12. Automation plan
13. Create Azure DevOps repository
14. Create Azure DevOps pipeline
15. Create Azure Keyvault
16. Define variables in Packer template and add it to repo
17. Define variable groups in Azure pipelines
18. Configure pipeline to deploy custom Windows Image
19. Run the pipeline & validate results
20. Final touches and phase overview
21. Phase2 - Deploy Azure Scale Set VM
22. Azure Scale Set Virtual machine Overview
23. Get started with Virtual Machine Scale Set
24. Add Virtual Machine Scale Set deployment in YAML pipeline
25. Run and Validate Virtual Machine Scale set deployment in YAML pipeline
26. Phase3 - Deploy Azure DevOps Agent
27. Azure DevOps Agent deployment scenarios
28. Configure Azure DevOps Agent Pool
29. Final touch & Test & Entire solution
30. Move scripts to files
31. Test your custom agents
32. How to connect to agents from outside

• Build automated machine images for multiple platforms from a single configuration file

• Create images in parallel

• Use tools like Chef or Puppet to do the provisioning

• Use it along with Continous delivery tools

• Launch the instance using the image, test and verify the infrastructure along with the development

• Learn about variables and other details of the HCL file

• Learn various provisions and builders

• Understand the difference between Ansible local and remote builder

• Create a docker container image, shell local and remote builder

• Create windows AMI

• Create and test Vagrant images

• Work with post-processors and other components of Hashicorp Packer

1. HashiCorp Packer Introduction
2. HashiCorp Packer Introduction
3. Manually Create AWS AMI
4. HashiCorp Packer Installation - CentOS
5. AWS API Key Setup
6. HashiCorp Packer Build Quick Demo
7. AWS AMI Cleanup
8. HashiCorp Packer Components and Detailed Discussion
9. HashiCorp Packer Usecases
10. Terminology Introduction
11. Templates and Variables
12. Passing variables through CLI and files
13. HCL Format Template
14. Builders and Provisioners
15. Provisioners Demo
16. Provisioners Demo HTTP server verify
17. Null Builders
18. Template Functions
19. Shell Provisioners AWS S3 Copy
20. Shell Provisioners AWS S3 Copy Demo
21. Ansible Local Provisioner
22. Ansible Remote Provisioner
23. Shell Provisioner - Local and Remote
24. Docker Container Provisioner
25. Multiple Parallel Build
26. Common Parameters Used With Provisioners
27. File Builder
28. Windows AMI Builder
29. Windows AMI Verify with EC2
30. Vagrant Installation and Introduction
31. Vagrant Provisioner
32. Post Processors
33. Post Processor Artifice
34. Post Processor Manifest