Automation of AMI Creation Using Packer

Purpose

Infra/Devops team maintains a Golden Image (Base Image) which is a production ready base image with pre-installed required software like java,tomcat,nagios-client, default-system users. For security patch or software version update we have to keep updating the Base Image which requires manual AMI updation and creation process.

Solution

Packer is easy to use and automates the creation of any type of machine image.Out of the box Packer comes with support to build images for Amazon EC2, CloudStack, DigitalOcean, Docker, Google Compute Engine, Microsoft Azure, QEMU, VirtualBox, VMware, and more.

1) Packer Download and install

 

Download Packer Binary from hashicorp site on your Linux machine

wget https://releases.hashicorp.com/packer/0.12.1/packer_0.12.1_linux_amd64.zip
 
 Unzip the downloaded zip file

unzip packer_0.12.1_linux_amd64.zip

Copy the binary file in your local path

cp packer /usr/local/bin/

Export the path

export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/bin/packer

Verifying the Installation

packer -v

2) Create a Basic Json template ( base_image.json) of packer

{ 
      "builders": [{ 
     "type": "amazon-ebs", 
     "access_key": "", 
     "secret_key": "", 
     "region": "us-west-2", 
     "source_ami": "ami-1e299d7e", 
     "instance_type": "t2.micro", 
     "ssh_username": "ec2-user", 
     "ami_name": "Base_Image_1.0.0" 
      }] 
 } 
  

access_key,secret_key

Provide access_key and secret_key either in template itself or set environment variables AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID and AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY else it looks for the credentials file (.aws/credentials) in the user’s home directory.

type

amazon-ebs Create EBS-backed AMIs by launching a source AMI and re-packaging it into a new AMI after provisioning.

region

Provide you region

source_ami

Provide source image ami id

instance_type

Provide the instance type of ami to be created

ssh_username

Provide default username (ec2-user for Amazon Linux AMI)

ami_name

Provide the name of new ami to be created

3)Create an IAM User named “packer_user” in AWS .

4)Create a custom inline Policy named “packer_ami_policy” as shown

 

{ 
      "Version": "2012-10-17", 
      "Statement": [ 
     { 
            "Effect": "Allow", 
            "Action": [ 
                 "ec2:AttachVolume", 
                 "ec2:AuthorizeSecurityGroupIngress", 
                 "ec2:CopyImage", 
                 "ec2:CreateImage", 
                 "ec2:CreateKeypair", 
                 "ec2:CreateSecurityGroup", 
                 "ec2:CreateSnapshot", 
                 "ec2:CreateTags", 
                 "ec2:CreateVolume", 
                 "ec2:DeleteKeypair", 
                 "ec2:DeleteSecurityGroup", 
                 "ec2:DeleteSnapshot", 
                 "ec2:DeleteVolume", 
                 "ec2:DeregisterImage", 
                 "ec2:DescribeImageAttribute", 
                 "ec2:DescribeImages", 
                 "ec2:DescribeInstances", 
                 "ec2:DescribeRegions", 
                 "ec2:DescribeSecurityGroups", 
                 "ec2:DescribeSnapshots", 
                 "ec2:DescribeSubnets", 
                 "ec2:DescribeTags", 
                 "ec2:DescribeVolumes", 
                 "ec2:DetachVolume", 
                 "ec2:GetPasswordData", 
                 "ec2:ModifyImageAttribute", 
                 "ec2:ModifyInstanceAttribute", 
                 "ec2:ModifySnapshotAttribute", 
                 "ec2:RegisterImage", 
                 "ec2:RunInstances", 
                 "ec2:StopInstances", 
                 "ec2:TerminateInstances" 
            ], 
            "Resource": "*" 
     } 
      ] 
 } 

5) Attach the created Policy “packer_ami_policy” to user “packer_user” as shown .

Validate the packer json file before running

root@adityad1:/home/adityad1/chef-hu/packer# packer validate base_image.json
Template validated successfully.

6) Build the packer to create your AMI

root@adityad1:/home/adityad1/chef-hu/packer# packer build base_image.json 
 amazon-ebs output will be in this color. 
  
 ==> amazon-ebs: Prevalidating AMI Name... 
      amazon-ebs: Found Image ID: ami-1e299d7e 
 ==> amazon-ebs: Creating temporary keypair: packer_586f6d61-50d3-87c7-79d4-47878630b37d 
 ==> amazon-ebs: Creating temporary security group for this instance... 
 ==> amazon-ebs: Authorizing access to port 22 the temporary security group... 
 ==> amazon-ebs: Launching a source AWS instance... 
      amazon-ebs: Instance ID: i-08ec69f82ca4d20f2 
 ==> amazon-ebs: Waiting for instance (i-08ec69f82ca4d20f2) to become ready... 
 ==> amazon-ebs: Waiting for SSH to become available... 
 ==> amazon-ebs: Connected to SSH! 
 ==> amazon-ebs: Stopping the source instance... 
 ==> amazon-ebs: Waiting for the instance to stop... 
 ==> amazon-ebs: Creating the AMI: Base_Image_1.0.0 
      amazon-ebs: AMI: ami-d3c073b3 
 ==> amazon-ebs: Waiting for AMI to become ready... 
 ==> amazon-ebs: Terminating the source AWS instance... 
 ==> amazon-ebs: Cleaning up any extra volumes... 
 ==> amazon-ebs: No volumes to clean up, skipping 
 ==> amazon-ebs: Deleting temporary security group... 
 ==> amazon-ebs: Deleting temporary keypair... 
 Build 'amazon-ebs' finished. 
  
 ==> Builds finished. The artifacts of successful builds are: 
 --> amazon-ebs: AMIs were created: 
  
 us-west-2: ami-d3c073b3 

Provision in Packer

For provisioning , I have used chef provision as shown inside packer to run my base_image cookbook recipe

{ 
      "builders": [{ 
     "type": "amazon-ebs", 
     "access_key": "", 
     "secret_key": "", 
     "region": "us-west-2", 
     "source_ami": "ami-1e299d7e", 
     "instance_type": "t2.micro", 
     "ssh_username": "ec2-user", 
     "ami_name": "Base_Image_1.0.0" 
      }], 
      "provisioners": [{ 
     "type": "file", 
     "source": "/home/adityad1/chef-hu/packer/packer_client.pem", 
     "destination": "/tmp/packer_client.pem" 
      }, { 
     "type": "chef-client", 
     "server_url": "https://api.chef.io/organizations/organization_name", 
     "node_name": "packer_client", 
     "install_command": "curl -L https://www.chef.io/chef/install.sh | {{if.Sudo}}sudo{{end}} bash -s -- -v 12.15.19", 
     "run_list": ["base_node::base_image"], 
     "validation_key_path": "/home/adityad1/chef-hu/.chef/client-validator.pem", 
     "validation_client_name": "client-validator", 
     "client_key": "/tmp/packer_client.pem", 
     "skip_clean_client": "true" 
      }] 
 } 
 

 

install_command

Provided chef url to install chef-client inside machine.

run_list

Provide your base_image cookbook recipe name to run

Trigger Packer through Jenkins

Download and install packer on your Jenkins server and Create a “packer” folder and upload base_image.json file on your Github Repository.

Create a simple Jenkins Job as shown

Add your GitHub Repository URL and Credentails

Add Build Step

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