Using HCP Packer

Note

HCP is under active development and features may change frequently.

In the previous chapter, we talked about image lifecycle management, establishing generic policies for retention using the manifest post-processor, and collecting outputs for each build in a directory. The good news is that HashiCorp Cloud Platform can actually do a lot of this lifecycle management automatically. HashiCorp Cloud Platform is the only paid and supported product under Packer. There is a Free tier that can be used for up to 10 images, but advanced features of the Standard and Plus tiers cost a fee based on consumption. As a relatively new feature, HCP Packer is largely HCL-only and is not supported by legacy JSON templates. One of the biggest challenges of Packer has always been image discovery. Now that Packer has built multiple versions of your images around the globe in multiple cloud providers, how can you deploy those images with something such as Terraform? Terraform can...