github.com/aclaygray/packer@v1.3.2/website/source/intro/index.html.md (about) 1 --- 2 layout: intro 3 page_title: Introduction 4 description: |- 5 Welcome to the world of Packer! This introduction guide will show you what 6 Packer is, explain why it exists, the benefits it has to offer, and how you 7 can get started with it. If you're already familiar with Packer, the 8 documentation provides more of a reference for all available features. 9 --- 10 11 # Introduction to Packer 12 13 Welcome to the world of Packer! This introduction guide will show you what 14 Packer is, explain why it exists, the benefits it has to offer, and how you can 15 get started with it. If you're already familiar with Packer, the 16 [documentation](/docs/index.html) provides more of a reference for all available 17 features. 18 19 ## What is Packer? 20 21 Packer is an open source tool for creating identical machine images for multiple 22 platforms from a single source configuration. Packer is lightweight, runs on 23 every major operating system, and is highly performant, creating machine images 24 for multiple platforms in parallel. Packer does not replace configuration 25 management like Chef or Puppet. In fact, when building images, Packer is able to 26 use tools like Chef or Puppet to install software onto the image. 27 28 A *machine image* is a single static unit that contains a pre-configured 29 operating system and installed software which is used to quickly create new 30 running machines. Machine image formats change for each platform. Some examples 31 include [AMIs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Machine_Image) for EC2, 32 VMDK/VMX files for VMware, OVF exports for VirtualBox, etc.