Community Tutorials

Create a Cloud Build image factory using Packer

Author(s): @johnlabarge , @ikwak , Published: 2020-12-15

Injae Kwak | Customer Engineer Specialist | Google

Contributed by Google employees.

This tutorial shows you how to create an image factory using Cloud Build and Packer by HashiCorp. The image factory automatically creates new images from Cloud Source Repositories each time a new tag is pushed to the repository, as shown in the following diagram.

packer win workflow diagram

This tutorial includes instructions for creating Packer images for Linux and Windows.

For building a Linux image, this tutorial uses Packer to create a new image from a CentOS 7 VM with Nginx.
For building a Windows image, this tutorial uses Packer to create a new image from a Windows Server 2019 VM with Python 3, Git, and 7-Zip, using Chocolatey as a package manager.

Secret Manager is only used for the Windows option.

Prerequisites

A Google Cloud account
One of the following:
- Project editor access to an existing project
- Organization permissions to create a new project in an existing organization

You can run commands in this tutorial using Cloud Shell in the Cloud Console, or you can use gcloud on your local computer if you have installed the Cloud SDK.

(Optional) Create a project with a billing account attached

This section helps you to set up a new Google Cloud project in which to run your Packer build factory. If you use an existing project for this tutorial, you can skip this section and go to the "Set the project variable" section.

Linux

PROJECT=[NEW PROJECT NAME]
ORG=[YOUR ORGANIZATION NAME]
BILLING_ACCOUNT=[YOUR_BILLING_ACCOUNT_NAME]
ZONE=[COMPUTE ZONE YOU WANT TO USE]
ACCOUNT=[GOOGLE ACCOUNT YOU WANT TO USE] or $(gcloud config get-value account)

gcloud projects create "$PROJECT" --organization=$(gcloud organizations list --format="value(name)" --filter="(displayName='$ORG')")
gcloud beta billing projects link $PROJECT --billing-account=$(gcloud alpha billing accounts list --format='value(name)' --filter="(displayName='$BILLING_ACCOUNT')")
gcloud config configurations create --activate $PROJECT
gcloud config set project $PROJECT
gcloud config set compute/zone $ZONE
gcloud config set account $ACCOUNT

Windows

$env:PROJECT="NEW PROJECT ID"
$env:ORG="YOUR ORGANIZATION NAME"
$env:BILLING_ACCOUNT="YOUR_BILLING_ACCOUNT_NAME"
$env:ZONE="COMPUTE ZONE YOU WANT TO USE"
$env:ACCOUNT="GOOGLE ACCOUNT YOU WANT TO USE" or $(gcloud config get-value account)

gcloud projects create "$env:PROJECT" --organization=$(gcloud organizations list --format="value(name)" --filter="(displayName='$env:ORG')")
gcloud beta billing projects link $env:PROJECT --billing-account=$(gcloud alpha billing accounts list --format='value(name)' --filter="(displayName='$env:BILLING_ACCOUNT')")
gcloud config configurations create --activate $env:PROJECT
gcloud config set project $env:PROJECT
gcloud config set compute/zone $env:ZONE
gcloud config set account $env:ACCOUNT

(Optional) Set the project variable

Skip this section if you created a new project.

If you are using an existing project, set the project variable to indicate which project to use for gcloud commands.

For more information on configurations see configurations. Replace [CONFIGURATION NAME] with the name of the configuration you want to use.

Linux

gcloud config configurations activate [CONFIGURATION NAME] #The configuration for the project you want to use
PROJECT=$(gcloud config get-value project)

Windows

gcloud config configurations activate [CONFIGURATION NAME] #The configuration for the project you want to use
$env:PROJECT=$(gcloud config get-value project)

Copy the files for this tutorial to a new working directory and Git repository

In this section, you download the files to your local environment and initialize Git in the working directory.

Linux

Create and go to a new working directory:

mkdir helloworld-image-factory
cd helloworld-image-factory

Download the tutorial scripts:

curl -L https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/community/raw/master/tutorials/create-cloud-build-image-factory-using-packer/cloudbuild.yaml >cloudbuild.yaml

curl -L https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/community/raw/master/tutorials/create-cloud-build-image-factory-using-packer/install-website.sh >install-website.sh

Initialize a Git repository in the working directory:
```
git init
```

Windows

Create new working directories using PowerShell:

New-Item -Name windows-image-factory -ItemType Directory

Set-Location -Path ./windows-image-factory

New-Item -Name scripts -ItemType Directory

Download the tutorial scripts to your local environment:

$baseURL = "https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/community/raw/master/tutorials/create-cloud-build-image-factory-using-packer/windows/"

$cloudbuildFiles = ("cloudbuild.yaml", "packer.json")
$packerFiles = ("bootstrap-packer.ps1", "cleanup-packer.ps1", "disable-uac.ps1", "install-chocolatey.ps1", "run-chocolatey.ps1")

# Downloading the remote files
foreach ($file in $cloudbuildFiles){
    Invoke-WebRequest -Uri "$baseURL+$file" -OutFile $file
}

foreach ($file in $packerFiles){
    Invoke-WebRequest -Uri "$baseURL+'scripts/'+$file" -OutFile $file
}

Initialize a Git repository in the working directory:
```
git init
```

Enable the required services

In this section, you enable the Google Cloud APIs necessary for the tutorial. The required services are the same for Windows and Linux images.

gcloud services enable sourcerepo.googleapis.com \
cloudapis.googleapis.com compute.googleapis.com \
servicemanagement.googleapis.com storage-api.googleapis.com \
cloudbuild.googleapis.com secretmanager.googleapis.com

(Windows image only) Managing secrets for parameters using Secret Manager

In this section, you use Secret Manager to store your input values for Packer in a secure and modular way. Although it's easier to simply hard-code parameters into the Packer template file, using a central source of truth like a secret manager increases manageability and reuseability among teams.

Create your secrets using the following commands:

echo -n "windows-2019" | gcloud secrets create image_factory-image_family --replication-policy="automatic" --data-file=-

echo -n "golden-windows" | gcloud secrets create image_factory-image_name --replication-policy="automatic" --data-file=-

echo -n "n1-standard-1" | gcloud secrets create image_factory-machine_type --replication-policy="automatic" --data-file=-

echo -n "us-central1" | gcloud secrets create image_factory-region --replication-policy="automatic" --data-file=-

echo -n "us-central1-b" | gcloud secrets create image_factory-zone --replication-policy="automatic" --data-file=-

echo -n "default" | gcloud secrets create image_factory-network --replication-policy="automatic" --data-file=-

echo -n "allow-winrm-ingress-to-packer" | gcloud secrets create image_factory-tags --replication-policy="automatic" --data-file=-

Optionally, you can customize the values using the documentation.

(Windows image only) Create a new VPC firewall to allow WinRM for Packer

Before you can provision using the WinRM (Windows Remote Management) communicator, you need to allow traffic through Google's firewall on the WinRM port (tcp:5986). This creates a new firewall called allow-winrm-ingress-to-packer that is stored with Secret Manager and used by Cloud Build in the cloudbuild.yaml configuration file.

gcloud compute firewall-rules create allow-winrm-ingress-to-packer \
--allow tcp:5986 --target-tags allow-winrm-ingress-to-packer

Give the Cloud Build service account permissions through an IAM role

Find the Cloud Build service account and add the editor role to it (in practice, use least privilege roles). For the Windows image, you also grant the secretmanager.secretAccessor role for Secret Manager.

Linux

CLOUD_BUILD_ACCOUNT=$(gcloud projects get-iam-policy $PROJECT --filter="(bindings.role:roles/cloudbuild.builds.builder)"  --flatten="bindings[].members" --format="value(bindings.members[])")

gcloud projects add-iam-policy-binding $PROJECT \
--member $CLOUD_BUILD_ACCOUNT \
--role roles/editor

Windows

$env:CLOUD_BUILD_ACCOUNT=$(gcloud projects get-iam-policy $env:PROJECT --filter="(bindings.role:roles/cloudbuild.builds.builder)"  --flatten="bindings[].members" --format="value(bindings.members[])")

gcloud projects add-iam-policy-binding $env:PROJECT \
--member $env:CLOUD_BUILD_ACCOUNT \
--role roles/editor

gcloud projects add-iam-policy-binding $env:PROJECT \
--member $env:CLOUD_BUILD_ACCOUNT \
--role roles/secretsmanager.secretAccessor

Create the repository in Cloud Source Repositories for your image creator

In this section, you commit your Cloud Build configuration file, Packer template, and bootstrap scripts to a repository in Google Cloud to start the Packer build.

Linux

gcloud source repos create helloworld-image-factory

Windows

gcloud source repos create windows-image-factory

Create the build trigger for the image creator source repository

By configuring a build trigger to the source repository you created in the previous step, you can define a webhook to tell Cloud Build to pull down your committed files and start the build process automatically.

Linux

Create a trigger on the build triggers page in Cloud Console:

Click Create Trigger.
In the Name field, enter Hello world image factory.
Under Event, select Push to a tag.
Under Source, select helloworld-image-factory as your Repository and the tag to match as your tag.
Under Build Configuration, select Cloud Build configuration file (yaml or json).
In the Cloud Build configuration file location, enter cloudbuild.yaml.
Under Substitution variables, click + Add variable.
In the Variable field enter _IMAGE_FAMILY and in Value enter centos-7.
In the Variable field enter _IMAGE_ZONE and in Value enter $ZONE.
Click Create to save your build trigger.

To see a list of image families:

gcloud compute images list | awk '{print $3}'  | awk '!a[$0]++'

Windows

Create a trigger on the build triggers page in Cloud Console:

Click Create Trigger.
In the Name field, enter Windows image factory.
Under Event, select Push new tag.
Under Source, select windows-image-factory as your Repository and the tag to match or .* (any tag) as your tag.
Under Build Configuration, select Cloud Build configuration file (yaml or json).
In the Cloud Build configuration file location, enter cloudbuild.yaml.
Click Create to save your build trigger.

Add the Packer Cloud Build image to your project

Get the builder from the community repository and submit it to your project. This allows Cloud Build to use a Docker container that contains the Packer binaries.

Linux

project_dir=$(pwd)
cd /tmp
git clone https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/cloud-builders-community.git
cd cloud-builders-community/packer
gcloud builds submit --config cloudbuild.yaml
rm -rf /tmp/cloud-builders-community
cd $project_dir

Windows

$env:PROJECT_DIR=$(Get-Location)
New-Item -Path "C:\" -Name "temp" -ItemType Directory
Set-Location -Path "C:\temp"

git clone https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/cloud-builders-community.git
Set-Location -Path "./cloud-builders-community/packer"
gcloud builds submit --config cloudbuild.yaml

Remove-Item -Path "C:\temp\cloud-builders-community" -Recurse -Force
Set-Location -Path $env:PROJECT_DIR

Add your repository as a remote repository and push

In this section, you configure the local Git instance to use the repository that you created.

Linux

(If running locally, not in Cloud Shell) Set up your Google credentials for Git:

gcloud init && git config --global credential.https://source.developers.google.com.helper gcloud.sh

Add the google repository as a remote:

git remote add google https://source.developers.google.com/p/$PROJECT/r/helloworld-image-factory

Add your files, tag them with a version number, and push them to your repository:

git add .
git commit -m "first image"
git tag v0.1
git push google master --tags

Windows

(If running locally, not in Cloud Shell) Set up your Google credentials for Git in PowerShell:
```
git config --global "credential.https://source.developers.google.com.helper" gcloud.cmd
```

Add the google repository as a remote:

git remote add google "https://source.developers.google.com/p/$env:PROJECT/r/windows-image-factory"

Add your files, tag them with a version number, and push them to your repository:

git add .
git commit -m "first image"
git tag v0.1
git push google master --tags

View build progress

You can view the standard output from both the staging VM and Packer to check on the build progress. After the Packer build completes successfully, it outputs the newly created image:

Step #1: Build 'googlecompute' finished.
Step #1: 
Step #1: ==> Builds finished. The artifacts of successful builds are:
Step #1: --> googlecompute: A disk image was created: golden-windows-2020-05-05-554-54

Open the Cloud Build page, find the build that is in progress, and click the link to view its progress.

Create a Compute Engine instance for the image in your Google Cloud project

In this section, you test the Compute Engine image that Packer created by creating a new instance.

Linux

Create a firewall rule to allow port 80 to test your new instance:

gcloud compute firewall-rules create http --allow=tcp:80 \
--target-tags=http-server --source-ranges=0.0.0.0/0

Create an instance using the new Linux image:

gcloud compute instances create helloworld-from-factory \
--image https://www.googleapis.com/compute/v1/projects/$PROJECT/global/images/helloworld-v01 \
--tags=http-server --zone=$ZONE

Windows

Open the Compute Engine page in Cloud Console and navigate to Images to see the new image.
Select the image and click Create instance.
Complete the wizard to start the instance, ensuring that Boot disk is set to use the new custom image.

Verifying the results

In this section, you verify that your deployment has worked correctly.

Linux

Wait a few minutes and open the browser to the IP address of the instance to see the special message.

Retrieve the instance IP address:

gcloud compute instances list --filter="name:helloworld*" --format="value(networkInterfaces[0].accessConfigs[0].natIP)"

Go to the IP address in the browser and make sure that you see the "Hello from the image factory!" message.

Windows

Wait a few minutes until the Windows VM has completed the boot up process.
Connect to your instance using RDP.
If you need to generate a Windows password, follow these instructions.
Verify that Git, Python, and 7-Zip have been installed successfully, matching the versions defined in the packages.config XML manifest.

Cleaning up

If you don't want to keep the resources after this tutorial, you can delete them.

Linux

Delete the firewall rule, the instance, and the image:

gcloud compute firewall-rules delete --quiet http
gcloud compute instances delete --quiet helloworld-from-factory
gcloud compute images delete --quiet helloworld-v01

Delete the Packer Cloud Build image:

gcloud container images delete --quiet gcr.io/$PROJECT/packer  --force-delete-tags

Delete the repository:
```
gcloud source repos delete --quiet helloworld-image-factory
```
Only do this if you don't want to perform the tutorial in this project again. The repository name won't be usable again for up to 7 days.

Windows

Delete the firewall rule, the instance, and the image:

gcloud compute firewall-rules delete --quiet http
gcloud compute instances delete --quiet helloworld-from-factory
gcloud compute images delete --quiet helloworld-v01

Delete the Packer Cloud Build image:

gcloud container images delete --quiet gcr.io/$PROJECT/packer  --force-delete-tags

Delete the repository:
```
gcloud source repos delete --quiet windows-image-factory
```
Only do this if you don't want to perform the tutorial in this project again. The repository name won't be usable again for up to 7 days.

Reference: Windows Packer scripts

cloudbuild.yaml contains the build configuration for the Cloud Build service, which uses Packer to build a new image using instructions within the packer.json file.

windows/packer.json contains the googlecompute builder template for creating a new image for use with Compute Engine.

Because of the way Packer uses WinRM as the communicator to connect and configure Windows, this template achieves the following:

"variables" contains placeholder values such as _PROJECT_ID that are dynamically changed by Cloud Build sourced from both built-in variables (project) and custom user variables (Secret Manager). By using "source_image_family", Packer automatically retrieves the latest version available for the machine image.
Configures WinRM to use HTTPS for connecting Packer and the staging Windows VM (creates a temporary, local self-signed certificate).
Using Compute Engine metadata "windows-startup-script-cmd", temporarily creates a new local account packer_user on the Windows VM and adds it to local administrator group to provide permissions for WinRM and installs the desired packages.
Within the "provisioners" section, create a local copy of packages.config and cleanup-packer.ps1 files in the staging Windows VM, to be used by Chocolatey and the "windows-shutdown-script-ps1" Compute Engine metadata to clean up when finished.
Still within the "provisioners" section, run the PowerShell scripts for bootstrapping your Windows environment using Chocolatey.
(Optional) You can replace the Chocolatey PowerShell scripts with your own custom bootstrap script, or pull/push configuration management tools such as Ansible, Puppet, Chef, or PowerShell DSC.
GCESysprep -NoShutdown is called as a way to seal the image using the optional -NoShutDown parameter to prevent the Windows environment from shutting down and create a false positive, unhealthy signal back to Packer. Lifecycle needs to be managed by Packer to complete the image workflow.

windows/scripts/bootstrap-packer.ps1 configures Packer to use an HTTPS connection for WinRM to secure communication between the staging VM and Packer host. The configuration made during this script such as a local certificate, listener, and firewall are deleted by cleanup-packer.ps1.

windows/scripts/cleanup-packer.ps1 is invoked as a shutdown script to remove the Chocolatey PowerShell binaries and the local user account for Packer, undo WinRM configurations, and then remove the shutdown script itself.

windows/scripts/disable-uac.ps1 installs the latest version of Chocolatey, a package management binary for PowerShell.

windows/scripts/packages.config contains a list of packages in an XML manifest for Chocolatey to install. This is where you can define any supported packages to install, as well as versioning, options, and switches. For details, see the Chocolatey documentation.

windows/scripts/run-chocolatey.ps1 invokes Chocolatey to install the packages defined in the XML manifest, including error handling. Because some Windows software requires a restart to complete the installation, this script allows it (exit code 3010) as Packer will shut down and sysprep the image as the final step.

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