Immutable infrastructure replaces the practice of updating running servers with the approach of building pre-configured images and replacing instances entirely. This eliminates configuration drift and ensures every deployment starts from a known, tested state.
Image Building Pipeline
Packer creates identical machine images for multiple platforms from a single configuration. An Ansible provisioner within Packer applies your configuration playbooks, installs application code, and hardens the image鈥攑roducing an AMI, Google Cloud image, or Docker image ready for deployment.
Version each image with a build number linked to your Git commit hash. This creates a clear audit trail from running infrastructure back to the exact source code and configuration that produced it, simplifying both debugging and compliance.
Integrate Packer builds into your CI/CD pipeline. Every merge to main triggers a new image build, automated testing of the image, and promotion to a staging environment. Once validated, the same image deploys to production with confidence that staging and production are identical.