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layout: "intro"
page_title: "Introduction"
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next_title: "Why Use Packer?"
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# Introduction to Packer

Welcome to the world of Packer! This introduction guide will show you what
Packer is, explain why it exists, the benefits it has to offer, and how
you can get started with it. If you're already familiar with Packer, the
[documentation](/docs) provides more of a reference for all available features.

## What is Packer?

Packer is an open source 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 parallel. Packer does not replace configuration management
like Chef or Puppet. In fact, when building images, Packer is able to use tools
like Chef or Puppet to install software onto the image.

A _machine image_ is a single static unit that contains a pre-configured operating
system and installed software which is used to quickly create new running machines.
Machine image formats change for each platform. Some examples include
[AMIs](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Machine_Image) for EC2,
VMDK/VMX files for VMware, OVF exports for VirtualBox, etc.
