Packer
Work through every question currently mapped to this canonical topic.
- What is Packer? What is it used for?
Answer
In general, Packer automates machine images creation. It allows you to focus on configuration prior to deployment while making the images. This allows you start the instances much faster in most cases.
- Packer follows a "configuration->deployment" model or "deployment->configuration"?
Answer
A configuration->deployment which has some advantages like:
- Deployment Speed - you configure once prior to deployment instead of configuring every time you deploy. This allows you to start instances/services much quicker.
- More immutable infrastructure - with configuration->deployment it's not likely to have very different deployments since most of the configuration is done prior to the deployment. Issues like dependencies errors are handled/discovered prior to deployment in this model.