Collection of labs using Packer and Ansible to automate VM image creation and management

Introduction

This workshops is a collection of labs using a selection of the tooling that we commonly see to automate processes around virtual machine image creation. Some of the tooling is designed to work across both Windows and Linux servers, but for the sake of these labs we will separate out the two as most admins naturally gravitate to the most common and native tooling for each. (If you disagree, use the comments below!)

Note that there is a host of useful material within Microsoft Learn and the various quickstarts and how to guides within Microsoft Docs, and it is assumed that you are familiar with many of these.

The aim of these labs is to bring together some of these technologies together into a cohesive set of tooling for standing up virtual machine images.

Pre-requisites

Please set up your laptop as per the automation prereqs page. (TO BE ADDED)

Not everything is needed for the Packer and Ansible labs, but chances are that you’ll dig into the other content as well!

Labs