This serves as an introduction to image.XO, outlining its purpose, advantages and important features.
The Image Management module is an extended implementation of Hashicorp’s Packer. It enables administrators to create standardized and consistent images across multiple platforms. With image.XO, you don’t need to write JSON-based configurations for multiple infrastructure images.
🎥: Watch our YouTube video for a visual walkthrough
Key features #
image.XO lets you use your custom installation scripts and extends the Packer implementation through the following features:
- Create Provisioner Groups
- Create Provisioner Roles
- Use PowerShell DSC configurations during image build (hosted and standalone with config.XO)
- Use PowerShell AppDeployment Toolkit packages, groups and roles (with application.XO)
Use cases #
- Continuous Delivery
- DEV/ACC/PRD alignment
- Demo creation
- Golden images
Top benefits #
Our Image Management module:
- Allows you to launch completely provisioned and configured machines in minutes, on repeat and consistently – create different images for development, acceptance or production environments or use one for all stages
- Defines pre-baked developer images or is usable in Citrix environments to create golden images – because it creates identical images for multiple platforms, you can run production in AWS, staging/QA in a private cloud like OpenStack and development in desktop virtualization solutions such as VMware or VirtualBox
- Installs and configures all the software for a machine at the time the image is built – if there are bugs in these scripts, they will be caught early rather than in production
- Implements Pester scripts (or similar) to test your machines against a defined state
