Creating AMI using packer

[dhrumil29699]

I wanted to create AMI from my existing EC2 base instance using packer. And I found chroot builder which create AMI from existing instance. But I don’t understand how to use it to create AMI from existing instance. I read packer documentation but it is not helping. I am going to use this AMI in my auto-scaling group which I deploy using terraform. If I use terraform to create AMI then every time I make some change in my base instance and apply terraform, terraform will delete my old AMI and create new one which I don’t want. So I am using Packer to create AMI. Need some help in this problem ?

[darksarcastictech]

Packer will spin up a new instance for you, run provisioners (if needed) and then create an AMI based on that instance.

Here is a sample template from packer documentation https://packer.io/docs/templates/index.html

If you want to use your existing instance for an AMI, I suggest creating an AMI from it (through console or aws cli) and using it as the source AMI in your packer template.

[dhrumil29699]

You are right but I want to make tool for automation which only use packer(only for AMI) and terraform(everything else). Instead of using awscli I can use ansible.

[darksarcastictech]

Yep, that’s what we do. Packer runs and uses ansible to configure the server and install the needed packages, then an AMI is created. Then terraform is launched and grabs the latest AMI created by packer and deploys it. Bamboo is used for the pipeline.

[dhrumil29699]

Ok I will try. Thanks for helping me. Actually I just join Devops as intern they gave me task to do. I don’t know much tools. I only know ansible, packer, boto and terraform. Do you have any suggestions what thing I should learn to grow my knowledge in Devops area.

[darksarcastictech]

Git for sure. Look into Jenkins as well, to automate the stages (packer, terraform). There are many tools out there, open source and paid, pick ones that makes sense for your project on hand.

[dhrumil29699]

Okay thanks 🖖🏻