In this blog post, we will discuss how you can create a minimalistic raw Ubuntu image using Packer and then deploy it on a bare-metal server using the provisioning engine, Tinkerbell.
What is Packer?
Packer by HashiCorp is an awesome tool to create pre-configured machine images which can be directly used to create an instance. This should not be seen as a replacement for other configuration tools like Ansible, Chef, etc. Instead, you can use the same tools to pre-configure your image, and with Packer, you can automate the management of your machine images like pushing to an image repository or ensuring your CI pipelines have updated images. Packer also helps you to create parallel builds, i.e you can create multiple images for different platforms using a single template. This enables you to ensure changes in your applications can be tested on multiple platforms simultaneously. It can also be seen as a factor to reduce the parity between developer and production builds.