Packer on Windows

• Open AWS Marketplace and search for "Packer Windows SecureAnyCloud".
• Select Continue to Subscribe, accept the terms, then select Continue to Configuration.
• Choose your Region and Software Version.
• Select Continue to Launch.
• Choose Launch through EC2 for full control over instance configuration.
• Select your instance type. t3.medium is recommended.
• Configure storage with at least 30 GB of gp3.
• Configure your Security Group with the inbound rule below.

Allow inbound TCP on port 3389 from your IP address only. This rule provides Remote Desktop (RDP) access.

• Select your EC2 key pair and launch the instance.

Wait for the EC2 instance to pass its 2/2 status checks. The Windows password can take up to 15 minutes after launch to become available.

• Open the AWS Console and go to EC2 > Instances.
• Select your instance.
• Choose Actions > Security > Get Windows password.
• Select Browse and upload your EC2 key pair .pem file.
• Select Decrypt password.
• Note the Username (Administrator) and the decrypted Password.

Open your Remote Desktop client.

On Windows: press Win + R, type mstsc and press Enter. Enter the public IP address of your instance, then select Connect.

On macOS: open Microsoft Remote Desktop and select Add PC. Enter the public IP address, then double-click the connection to connect.

When prompted, enter Username: Administrator and Password: the decrypted value from Step 2.

If a certificate warning appears, select Continue to proceed.

Once connected, open Command Prompt from the desktop shortcut and confirm that Packer is installed.

packer -help

The command prints the usage text and the list of available commands:

Usage: packer [--version] [--help] <command> [<args>] Available commands are: build build image(s) from template console creates a console for testing variable interpolation fix fixes templates from old versions of packer fmt rewrites HCL2 config files to canonical format hcl2_upgrade transform a JSON template into an HCL2 configuration init install missing plugins or upgrade plugins inspect see components of a template plugins interact with Packer plugins and catalog validate check that a template is valid version prints the Packer version

Then check the installed version:

packer version

Create an example Packer template.

Create a project directory:

cmd mkdir C:\Users\Administrator\Documents\packer-project cd C:\Users\Administrator\Documents\packer-project

Create a template file named example.pkr.hcl:

cmd notepad example.pkr.hcl

Enter a basic Amazon EBS template:

```hcl packer { required_plugins { amazon = { version = ">= 1.0.0" source = "github.com/hashicorp/amazon" } } }

source "amazon-ebs" "example" { ami_name = "packer-example-{{timestamp}}" instance_type = "t3.micro" region = "us-east-1" source_ami_filter { filters = { name = "amzn2-ami-hvm-*-x86_64-gp2" root-device-type = "ebs" virtualization-type = "hvm" } most_recent = true owners = ["amazon"] } ssh_username = "ec2-user" }

build { sources = ["source.amazon-ebs.example"] provisioner "shell" { inline = ["echo 'Hello from Packer!'"] } } ```

Initialize the plugins:

cmd packer init example.pkr.hcl

Validate the template:

cmd packer validate example.pkr.hcl

Build the image. This requires AWS credentials to be configured (see the next section):

cmd packer build example.pkr.hcl