github.com/marksheahan/packer@v0.10.2-0.20160613200515-1acb2d6645a0/website/source/intro/index.html.md (about)

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