github.com/ratanraj/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.