Nomad Pack

Nomad Pack is a templating and packaging tool used with HashiCorp Nomad. Nomad Pack is currently Generally Available (GA) as of nomad-pack v0.1.0.

Nomad Pack is used to:

• Easily deploy popular applications to Nomad
• Re-use common patterns across internal applications
• Find and share job specifications with the Nomad community

Installation

To simplify the getting started experience, you can download a precompiled binary and run it on your machine locally. After downloading Nomad Pack, unzip the package. Make sure that the nomad binary is available on your PATH. You can inspect the locations available on your path by running this command:

$ echo $PATH
/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin

The output is a list of locations separated by colons. You can make Nomad Pack available by moving the binary to one of the listed locations, or by adding Nomad Pack's location to your PATH.

Nomad Pack is also available as a Docker image. With Docker installed on your local machine, you can pull the latest image by running the following command:

$ docker pull hashicorp/nomad-pack:0.2.0

Nightly Builds and Docker Image Preview

Nomad Pack is under constant updates, so every day the nightly release is updated with binaries built off the latest code in the main branch. This should make it easier for you to try new features and bug fixes.

Each commit to main also generates a preview Docker image that can be accessed from the hashicorppreview/nomad-pack repository on Docker Hub.

Usage

Dependencies

Nomad Pack users must have Nomad running and accessible at the address defined in the NOMAD_ADDR environment variable.

If Nomad ACLs are enabled, a token with proper permissions must be defined in the NOMAD_TOKEN environment variable.

Basic Use

First, run the list command to see which packs are available to deploy.

nomad-pack list

If you don't see the default registry (nomad registry list), it can be added with the registry add command.

nomad-pack registry add default github.com/hashicorp/nomad-pack-community-registry

To deploy one of these packs, use the run command. This deploys each jobs defined in the pack to Nomad. To deploy the hello_world pack, you would run the following command:

nomad-pack run hello_world

Each pack defines a set of variables that can be provided by the user. To get information on the pack and to see which variables can be passed in, run the info command.

nomad-pack info hello_world

Values for these variables are provided using the --var flag.

nomad-pack run hello_world --var message=hola

Values can also be provided by passing in a variables file. See the variables section of the Detailed usage guide for details.

tee -a ./my-variables.hcl << END
message="bonjour"
END

nomad-pack run hello_world -f ./my-variables.hcl

If you want to remove all of the resources deployed by a pack, run the destroy command with the pack name.

nomad-pack destroy hello_world

Adding Non-Default Pack Registries

When using Nomad Pack, the default registry for packs is the Nomad Pack Community Registry. Packs from this registry will be made automatically available.

You can add additional registries by using the registry add command. For instance, if you wanted to add an example Gitlab registry, you would run the following command to download the registry.

nomad-pack registry add example gitlab.com/mikenomitch/pack-registry

To view the packs you can now deploy, run the registry list command.

nomad-pack registry list

Packs from this registry can now be deployed using the run command.

Writing your own Packs

Nomad Pack is valuable when used with official and community packs, but many users will also want to use their own.

Converting your existing Nomad job specifications into reusable packs is achievable in a few steps, see the Writing Packs documentation for more details.

Pack Registries

Packs are organized into "registries" which contain multiple packs and shared templates.

The Nomad Pack Community Registry is a public registry for community-maintained packs. Nomad community members are encouraged to share their packs and collaborate with one another in this repo.

Pull Requests and feedback on both repositories are welcome!

Upcoming Features and Changes

• Support for Volumes and ACLs
• Support for other Version Control Systems
• Pack search command
• Integration into the official Nomad CLI

Additional Resources

• Detailed Usage Guide
• How to Write Your Own Pack
• Contributing
• GitHub Action for Nomad Pack

Tutorials

• Introduction to Nomad Pack
• Writing Custom Packs