---
page_title: Data sources overview
description: |
  A data source holds data you want to use in the Packer configuration. Define a data source in your configuration so that Packer can use external data during builds.
---

⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️
> [!IMPORTANT]  
> **Documentation Update:** Product documentation previously located in `/website` has moved to the [`hashicorp/web-unified-docs`](https://github.com/hashicorp/web-unified-docs) repository, where all product documentation is now centralized. Please make contributions directly to `web-unified-docs`, since changes to `/website` in this repository will not appear on developer.hashicorp.com.
⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️

# Data sources

Data sources let Packer fetch data to use in a template, including information defined outside of Packer.

Refer to the [`data`](/packer/docs/templates/hcl_templates/datasources) block documentation to learn more about working with data sources. The documentation also contains details about each type of data source.

Data sources are only available in HCL2 templates and require Packer `v1.7.0` and newer.

