Creating Cloud Images From Scratch With Packer And Qemu

Use Packer, QEMU, autoinstall, kickstart and cloud-init to produce custom Cloud images for AWS and Azure

What you’ll learn
Learn how to use Packer to create virtual machine images
Learn how to import Packer-generated virtual machine images to AWS
Learn how to import Packer-generated virtual machine images to Azure
Learn how to use autoinstall technologies such as kickstart, autoinstall and cloud-init

Requirements
Basic Linux command-line knowledge

Description
In this course you will learn how to create virtual machine disk images automatically with Packer, QEMU, autoinstall, kickstart and cloud-init. You will also learn how what changes you need to make to the vanilla operating system installations to make the images suitable for use AWS and Azure. Finally you will be able to convert, upload and import your disk images to AWS and Azure and to create virtual machines out of them. This course includes a comprehensive review of the technologies used in addition to practical demos. The whole deployment chain from “automatically install an operating system” to “create a VM from a custom VM image in a Cloud” is very complex. This is particularly true for Microsoft Azure and using a Red Hat or a clone such as Rocky Linux 9 makes things even more complex. But fear not – this course provides an integrated suite of tested automation code that we have developed and provide for free for you, the student.This is our first video course so we appreciate if you can provide constructive feedback – this way we can improve the course for you and all future students. We would like to, for example, cover Debian along with its preseed technology, but are not sure if there’s much demand for it. So your voice matters!

Overview
Section 1: Introduction

Lecture 1 Introduction to the course

Lecture 2 Instructor introduction: Samuli

Lecture 3 Instructor introduction: Ricky

Lecture 4 Impact of the Hashicorp license change to Packer

Lecture 5 External course materials

Section 2: Autoinstall technologies

Lecture 6 Introduction to cloud-init

Lecture 7 Cloud-init demo

Lecture 8 Introduction to Ubuntu Autoinstall

Lecture 9 Introduction to Red Hat Kickstart

Section 3: Building virtual machine images with Packer and QEMU

Lecture 10 Packer, QEMU and machine images

Lecture 11 Packer QEMU plugin

Lecture 12 Building Ubuntu 24.04 VM images: creating a custom autoinstall file

Lecture 13 Demo: Ubuntu 24.04 installation with Packer

Lecture 14 Building Rocky Linux 9 VM images: review the autogenerated kickstart file

Lecture 15 Building Rocky Linux 9 VM images: creating a custom kickstart file

Lecture 16 Building Rocky Linux 9 VM images: creating the Packerfile

Lecture 17 Demo: Rocky Linux 9 installation with Packer

Lecture 18 Demo: guestmount

Section 4: Creating virtual machine images for AWS EC2

Lecture 19 Building Ubuntu 24.04 VM images: provisioning for AWS EC2

Lecture 20 Building Rocky Linux 9 VM images: provisioning for AWS EC2

Section 5: Importing VM images to AWS EC2

Lecture 21 Installing AWS CLI

Lecture 22 Setting up IAM role AWS VM Import Export

Lecture 23 Uploading VM image and convert it into an AMI

Lecture 24 Creating an AWS EC2 instance from your AMI

Section 6: Creating virtual machines images for Microsoft Azure

Lecture 25 Building Ubuntu 24.04 VM images: provisioning for Microsoft Azure

Lecture 26 Building Rocky Linux 9 VM images: provisioning for Microsoft Azure

Section 7: Importing VM images to Microsoft Azure

Lecture 27 Installing Powershell on Linux

Lecture 28 Resizing and converting the disk image for Azure

Lecture 29 Uploading the disk image to Azure and converting it to a managed disk

Lecture 30 Demo: importing a disk image into Microsoft Azure

Lecture 31 Creating an Azure VM from the disk image

Anyone interested in automatic installation technologies such as autoinstall, kickstart or cloud-init,Those who need to build custom Linux disk images and deploy them to AWS or Azure