Root Image Factory

This uses Packer to create root Debian 11 images.

A note on terminology

We use Root Image to mean a completely unprovisioned bare image with nothing beyond a basic OS install. We use Base Image to mean a partially provisioned image with services required by all operational servers, e.g. monitoring, log aggregation, telemetry, etc.

Local System Requirements

• packer >= 1.7.3
• ansible >= 4.3

Building

Change to the packer directory and run

packer build -timestamp-ui root_image.pkr.hcl

to build root Debian 11 AMIs and Vagrant boxes. See .circleci/config.yml for how CI invokes this per account.