open-nomad/terraform/aws/packer/README.md

# Build an Amazon machine image with Packer

[Packer](https://www.packer.io/intro/index.html) is HashiCorp's open source tool 
for creating identical machine images for multiple platforms from a single 
source configuration. The Terraform templates included in this repo reference a 
publicly avaialble Amazon machine image (AMI) by default. The Packer build 
configuration used to create the public AMI is included [here](./packer.json). 
If you wish to customize it and build your own private AMI, follow the 
instructions below.

## Pre-requisites

See the pre-requisites listed [here](../../README.md). If you did not use the 
included `Vagrantfile` to bootstrap a staging environment, you will need to 
[install Packer](https://www.packer.io/intro/getting-started/install.html).

Set environment variables for your AWS credentials if you haven't already:

```bash
$ export AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=[ACCESS_KEY_ID]
$ export AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=[SECRET_ACCESS_KEY]
```

After you make your modifications to `packer.json`, execute the following 
command to build the AMI:

```bash
$ packer build packer.json
```

Don't forget to copy the AMI ID to your [terraform.tfvars file](../env/us-east/terraform.tfvars).