Packer is described as '"source available" tool for creating identical machine images for multiple platforms from a single source configuration. Packer is lightweight, runs on every major operating system, and is highly performant, creating machine images for multiple platforms in' and is an app in the network & admin category. There are five alternatives to Packer for a variety of platforms, including Mac, Windows, Linux, Self-Hosted and VMware Workstation Pro apps. The best Packer alternative is Docker, which is both free and Open Source. Other great apps like Packer are Vagrant, Crane, Singularity and Kata Containers.
Docker is an open-source engine that automates the deployment of any application as a lightweight, portable, self-sufficient container that will run virtually anywhere.
Create and manage virtualized development environments. Vagrant is a tool for building complete development environments. With an easy-to-use workflow and focus on automation, Vagrant lowers development environment setup time, increases development/production parity, and makes...
Crane is a container image tool that includes building local Docker images; connecting to DockerHub; listing local and remote container images; pushing local images to the DockerHub registry, and importing remote container images into an MLOps platform cluster.
Singularity is a container solution with a focus on building reproducible software stacks and running them most efficiently on existing HPC, scientific, compute farm and even enterprise architectures.
Kata Containers is an open source, secure container runtime with lightweight virtual machines that feel and perform like containers, but provide stronger workload isolation using hardware virtualization technology as a second layer of defense.
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Docker creates portable container images for runtime environments, while Packer builds machine images (like AMIs, VM templates) for provisioning infrastructure.