Better Together: Packer + Ansible Automation Platform

Originally published on the Riverpoint Technology Blog

Many organizations using the Ansible Automation Platform (AAP) still provision virtual machines manually and then run playbooks afterward. That process often involves waiting for infrastructure tickets, scheduling jobs, and completing lengthy configuration steps. In some cases, it can take hours or even days for a system to be ready for use.

Packer can communicate with both the public cloud or the hypervisor, as well act as a provisioner, changing the existing workflow to mint golden images. Deployments begin with a system that is ready in minutes, not days. Although it includes native Ansible support, Enterprise architects often point out problems right away: "You are bypassing all the governance we have built around AAP. No centralized logging, no RBAC, no audit trails, and no consistent execution environments." For teams that rely on AAP for governance and standardized workflows, local Ansible runs create silos or force duplication. To address this, a custom Packer provisioner was built to integrate directly with the AAP API. Instead of running Ansible locally, Packer now calls job templates from AAP during image builds, enabling organizations to continue using their existing playbooks and environments while benefiting from the speed and repeatability of image factories.

With this approach, image builds run under the same governance as production workloads and benefit from centralized logging, RBAC, and consistent execution environments. Concerns about bypassing controls disappear since all automation stays inside AAP. The result is faster provisioning, reusable images, and an automation workflow that feels both modern and enterprise-ready.

Using the Provisioner

First the plugin will need to be added to the required plugins:

packer {
  required_plugins {
    ansible-aap = {
      source  = "github.com/rptcloud/ansible-aap"
      version = "1.0.0"
    }
  }
}

Then within the build spec, the provisioner can be configured to your AAP instance, assigned a job template ID, and all API orchestration occurs within the code. In a packer template, it would look something like:

build {
  sources = ["source.amazon-ebs.example"]

  provisioner "ansible-aap" {
    tower_host          = "https://aap.example.com"
    access_token        = vault("secret/data/aap", "access_token")
    job_template_id     = 11 # Job template to install docker on host
    organization_id     = 1

    dynamic_inventory   = true

    extra_vars = {
      Name        = "packer-ansible-demo"
      Environment = "production"
      BuiltBy     = "packer"
    }

    timeout       = "15m"
    poll_interval = "10s"
  }
}

amazon-ebs.example: output will be in this color.

==> amazon-ebs.example: Prevalidating any provided VPC information
==> amazon-ebs.example: Prevalidating AMI Name: packer-ansible-demo-20250820181254
...
==> amazon-ebs.example: Waiting for SSH to become available...
==> amazon-ebs.example: Connected to SSH!
==> amazon-ebs.example: Setting a 15m0s timeout for the next provisioner...
    amazon-ebs.example: 🌐 Attempting to connect to AAP server: https://aap.example.com
    amazon-ebs.example: 🔧 Initializing AAP client...
    amazon-ebs.example: ✅ AAP client initialized successfully
    amazon-ebs.example: 🎯 Creating inventory for target host: 54.146.55.206
    amazon-ebs.example: 🗄️ Using organization ID: 1
    amazon-ebs.example: ✅ Created inventory with ID: 75
    amazon-ebs.example: ✅ Created SSH credential ID: 63
    amazon-ebs.example: 🖥️ Adding host 54.146.55.206 to inventory
    amazon-ebs.example: ✅ Added host ID: 66
    amazon-ebs.example: 🚀 Launching job template ID 10 for target_host=54.146.55.206
    amazon-ebs.example: ✅ Job launched https://aap.example.com/execution/jobs/playbook/142/output/. Waiting for completion...
    amazon-ebs.example: ⏳ Polling job status...
    amazon-ebs.example: 🎉 Job completed successfully!
    amazon-ebs.example: Identity added: /runner/artifacts/142/ssh_key_data (packer-aap-key)
    amazon-ebs.example: 
    amazon-ebs.example: PLAY [Install Docker] **********************************************************
    amazon-ebs.example: 
    amazon-ebs.example: TASK [Gathering Facts] *********************************************************
    amazon-ebs.example: [WARNING]: Platform linux on host 54.146.55.206 is using the discovered Python
    amazon-ebs.example: interpreter at /usr/bin/python3.7, but future installation of another Python
    amazon-ebs.example: interpreter could change the meaning of that path. See
    amazon-ebs.example: https://docs.ansible.com/ansible-
    amazon-ebs.example: core/2.16/reference_appendices/interpreter_discovery.html for more information.
    amazon-ebs.example: ok: [54.146.55.206]
    amazon-ebs.example: 
    amazon-ebs.example: TASK [Update package cache] ****************************************************
    amazon-ebs.example: ok: [54.146.55.206]
    amazon-ebs.example: 
    amazon-ebs.example: TASK [Install Docker] **********************************************************
    amazon-ebs.example: changed: [54.146.55.206]
    amazon-ebs.example: 
    amazon-ebs.example: TASK [Start and enable Docker service] *****************************************
    amazon-ebs.example: changed: [54.146.55.206]
    amazon-ebs.example: 
    amazon-ebs.example: TASK [Add ec2-user to docker group] ********************************************
    amazon-ebs.example: changed: [54.146.55.206]
    amazon-ebs.example: 
    amazon-ebs.example: PLAY RECAP *********************************************************************
    amazon-ebs.example: 54.146.55.206              : ok=5    changed=3    unreachable=0    failed=0    skipped=0    rescued=0    ignored=0
    amazon-ebs.example: 🧹 Cleaning up credential 63...
    amazon-ebs.example: 🧹 Cleaning up host 66...
    amazon-ebs.example: 🧹 Cleaning up inventory 75...
==> amazon-ebs.example: Stopping the source instance...
 ...
Build 'amazon-ebs.example' finished after 4 minutes 45 seconds.

==> Wait completed after 4 minutes 45 seconds

==> Builds finished. The artifacts of successful builds are:
--> amazon-ebs.example: AMIs were created:
us-east-1: ami-0d056993e3e2be56f

How the Plugin Integration Works

AAP has a well-documented REST API. The provisioner handles the entire lifecycle through API calls. Here's the workflow:

Overview

Under the hood

1. Dynamic Inventory Creation

First, we create a temporary inventory in AAP. Every build receives its temporary inventory with a timestamp, ensuring no conflicts or stepping on other builds, providing clean isolation.

curl -X POST https://aap.example.com/api/controller/v2/inventories/ \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $AAP_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "name": "packer-inv-1642684800",
    "description": "Temporary inventory for packer provisioning",
    "organization": 1
  }'

Response:

{
  "id": 123,
  "name": "packer-inv-1642684800",
  "organization": 1,
  "created": "2025-01-20T10:00:00Z"
}

2. Host Registration

Next, we register the target host that Packer is building. In the provisioner, we retrieve all connection details directly from Packer's communicator. SSH keys, passwords, WinRM creds, whatever Packer is using to talk to the instance:

curl -X POST https://aap.example.com/api/controller/v2/hosts/ \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $AAP_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "name": "10.0.1.100",
    "inventory": 123,
    "variables": "{\"ansible_host\": \"10.0.1.100\", \"ansible_port\": 22, \"ansible_user\": \"ec2-user\"}"
  }'

Response:

{
  "id": 456,
  "name": "10.0.1.100",
  "inventory": 123,
  "variables": "{\"ansible_host\": \"10.0.1.100\", \"ansible_port\": 22, \"ansible_user\": \"ec2-user\"}"
}

3. Dynamic Credential Management

Each build has the option to use a temporary credential provided to AAP; this refers to SSH key or username/password authentication.

curl -X POST https://aap.example.com/api/controller/v2/credentials/ \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $AAP_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "name": "packer-ssh-cred-1642684800",
    "description": "SSH credential for Packer builds",
    "credential_type": 1,
    "organization": 1,
    "inputs": {
      "username": "ec2-user",
      "ssh_key_data": "-----BEGIN PRIVATE KEY-----\nMIIEvgIBADANBgkqhkiG9w0BAQEFAASCBKgwggSkAgEAAoIBAQC..."
    }
  }'

Response:

{
  "id": 789,
  "name": "packer-ssh-cred-1642684800",
  "credential_type": 1,
  "organization": 1
}

4. Job Orchestration

Finally, we launch the actual job template. For this integration to work properly, your job template in AAP needs to be configured to accept runtime parameters:

{
  "name": "Packer Image Build Template",
  "ask_inventory_on_launch": true,
  "ask_credential_on_launch": true,
  "ask_variables_on_launch": true
}

The ask_inventory_on_launch and ask_credential_on_launch settings are crucial as they allow the provisioner to inject the temporary inventory and credentials at launch time instead of using pre-configured values. Without these settings, the job template would try to use its default inventory and credentials, which won't have access to your Packer-managed instance.

Here's the launch request:

curl -X POST https://aap.example.com/api/controller/v2/job_templates/42/launch/ \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $AAP_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "inventory": 123,
    "credentials": [789],
    "extra_vars": {
      "environment": "production",
      "packer_build_name": "amazon-linux-base",
      "packer_build_id": "build-1642684800"
    }
  }'

Response:

{
  "job": 1001,
  "ignored_fields": {},
  "id": 1001,
  "type": "job",
  "url": "/api/controller/v2/jobs/1001/",
  "status": "pending"
}

Then we poll the job status until completion:

curl -X GET https://aap.example.com/api/controller/v2/jobs/1001/ \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $AAP_TOKEN"

Response when complete:

{
  "id": 1001,
  "status": "successful",
  "finished": "2025-01-20T10:15:30Z",
  "elapsed": 330.5
}

Automated Resource Lifecycle Management

One of the more critical steps is to ensure that temporary resources are cleaned up. Nothing worse than finding 500 orphaned inventories in AAP because builds crashed. The provisioner is coded to track and clean up in a dependency-safe cleanup process:

# Delete credential first
curl -X DELETE https://aap.example.com/api/controller/v2/credentials/789/ \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $AAP_TOKEN"

# Then delete the host (depends on credential being removed)
curl -X DELETE https://aap.example.com/api/controller/v2/hosts/456/ \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $AAP_TOKEN"

# Finally delete the inventory (depends on hosts being removed)
curl -X DELETE https://aap.example.com/api/controller/v2/inventories/123/ \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $AAP_TOKEN"

Get Started

Ready to integrate your Packer workflows with AAP? The provisioner is open source and available on GitHub. Check out the repository for installation instructions, configuration examples, and contribution guidelines:

rptcloud/packer-plugin-ansible-aap

If you're using this provisioner in your environment or have ideas for improvements, contributions and feedback are welcome!