packer

2 TILs filed under packer.

Reading order: HashiCorp infrastructure tooling

1. What Terraform/OpenTofu actually is, and how it works in terraform
2. What Packer actually is, and how it works
3. What Terraform/OpenTofu, Nomad, and Packer are, and how they relate in terraform
4. Terraform state locking just dropped its DynamoDB requirement in terraform

Everything in this topic, oldest first

What Packer actually is, and how it works - 2026-09-17

Second entry in the HashiCorp infrastructure series. Terraform/OpenTofu manages the lifecycle of infrastructure over time; Packer's job stops the moment it hands you a finished image. That single-shot, no-state nature is the thing to understand before anything else about it.

Kickstart, cloud-init and Image Builder are three layers, not three choices - 2026-09-20

Asking which of kickstart, cloud-init or Red Hat Image Builder is the right way to provision a RHEL 9/10 template with Packer sounds like a three-way comparison. Checked against each tool's own documentation, it isn't one — they operate at different moments, and the two that…