packer.io - vagrant

Interestingly i have been using packer.io for a long time for creating OVF for my runtime environment.

I wanted to use a stable VM configuration across my development teams for dev purposes, which took me to use the vagrantup.

Just wondering what the clear usecase and which to be used for what, pondering around for a while i am sharing my thoughts here

KEY :

*Important difference is vagrant takes a base box from vagrant image over https://files.vagrantup.com/precise64.box
while the packer can work offline with local ISO software image.


packer.io ( create a virtual machine in a format )

• is a tool to create identical AMI,OVF,OVA images of VM
• Need a base image to start with an something like a debian ISO ...( i used a local folder where i have all images downloaded) so my packer works offline
• Mostly used to create VMs
• configuration is JSON representation 
• Copied (https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/packer-tool/4lB4OqhILF8/NPoMYeew0sEJ)* You want a custom OS or custom prepared box. You're generally tied to publicly available boxes (such as the ones I make). With Packer, you can create your own custom box that has your own OS installed in some specific way. This is useful if you want to match what runs in production more closely.
   

vagrant ( is to configure your virtual machine aka vBox)

•  pretty much virtual box
• Works over https to pull stable images
• Copied (https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/packer-tool/4lB4OqhILF8/NPoMYeew0sEJ)You want to pre-run provisioners so that `vagrant up` is faster. With Packer, you can run Chef/Puppet/etc. beforehand and bake it into an image, essentially getting rid of the provision time when doing a `vagrant up`. This can speed things up drastically. A lot of bigger companies do this sort of thing because running provisioning is pretty heavy

Other useful links
http://pretengineer.com/post/packer-vagrant-infra/
https://github.com/fredhsu/odl-vagrant
https://fredhsu.wordpress.com/2013/11/04/vagrant-with-opendaylight/
https://github.com/mitchellh/packer
https://docs.vagrantup.com/v2/installation/

Docker OVS

I was looking for setting up virtual switch inside docker and came across this very useful slide presented in meetup.

It is very interesting , also never forget to read this link in particular to docker security

https://docs.docker.com/articles/security/
https://docs.docker.com/articles/https/

Docker-OVS from snrism

HP VAN SDN - One Stop Shop

HP VAN SDN controller - documentation collections

How to setup SSH on public git repo

Just a quick note on how to set up SSH keys for git if you using windows

These are the steps I’ve used for connecting to GitHub with SSH on Windows using the PuTTY tools.

Always remember any git project has a web interface , user need an account to clone, and it takes a list of "keys"  (SSH Public ) to be added to this web interface.

Step 1 - Download Putty Tools

Download these three PuTTY tools:

1. plink.exe
2. pageant.exe
3. puttygen.exe

Move them to some place permanent, for example c:\bin.

Step 2 - Add GIT_SSH Environment Variable

Set name to GIT_SSH and value to the location of plink.exe.

Step 3 - Create a Key

Use puttygen.exe to generate and public/private key.
Save the private key somewhere with a passphrase and then copy the public key text to the clipboard.

Step 4 - Add Key to GitHub

Login to GitHub and under Account settings > SSH Keys add a new key and paste your key.

Key (PKI) Management for Dummies

Courtesey : Thales Security