If Terraform already provisions everything, why keep Packer in the stack? Make the case for both.

Terraform shapes the world; images define what boots inside it. Bake contents into versioned artifacts on a patch cadence, roll fleets by replacement, and keep user_data for identity and wiring only.

Grounded in researched DevOps, SRE and platform engineering interview loops, written to a senior-engineer editorial bar, and never padded to hit a word count.