Deployment pain points with Packer and Ansible

[webberwang]

• We're using consul to dynamically inject values into droplets, but this means we need to install a sidebar to each droplet manually using ansible
• There's just so many steps that could go wrong during setup, ssh copying permissions etc
• It doesn't seem very containerized

You're absolutely right - you're experiencing the exact pain points that drive teams to Kubernetes! Your setup is sophisticated but has too much manual glue code. Let me validate your concerns:

• We're still managing VM's even though with IAC and idempotency

{
containers: "Docker containers",
but: "Running on VMs you manage",
deployment: "Packer + Ansible + Terraform",
result: "Pets not cattle"
}

// What containerized should feel like:
{
image: "Just a Docker image",
deploy: "Push to registry → Auto-deploys",
config: "Environment variables or mounted configs",
result: "Cattle not pets"
}