Open Stack

On 4 April 2013 11:10, Ian McLeod <imcleod at redhat.com> wrote:
> We've put together a simple proof of concept of driving native operating
> system installers using Nova:
>
> https://github.com/redhat-openstack/image-building-poc
>
> The python CLI tool in this repo, when combined with the example install
> scripts, can build both glance-backed and cinder-backed JEOS images for
> the following operating systems entirely inside of Nova:
>
> Fedora 17, 18
> Ubuntu 10.04, 12.04, 12.10
> RHEL 5.9, 6.4
>
> These builds can be done using network install sources and, in some
> limited cases, DVD/ISO install sources.  Full details can be found in
> the README.md file on github.
>
> Some background discussion about this approach from earlier this year
> can be found here:
>
> https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/NovaImageBuilding
>
> The code is a bit rough around the edges but we believe the approach has
> promise and can form the basis for a proper image building service
> native to OpenStack.

It's cool you've done this - I think such a general solution is
necessary, particularly for folk running systems like Windows.

> I'd be grateful if anyone who's interested in the problem of image
> building could have a look at this, give it a try and share
> thoughts/feedback.

We've been working on a much lighter weight solution - using as you
note chroots - because we need something that can build images *fast*.
TripleO wants to deploy Openstack as part of the CI pipeline, so even
short (multiple second) delays add up rapidly as you starting
generating images inline in the landing process.
https://github.com/stackforge/diskimage-builder/ is the project we put
together.

The focus we have is building images which can be used to deploy
openstack, so we have a hard requirement to not depend on openstack
itself - but having an API that can drive building of images (by
spinning up a machine on the back end) would be useful, to make custom
images easier for folk on limited hardware etc.

Perhaps we can collaborate on having a common API for creating images,
with multiple backends - one oz for super generality, and one
diskimage-builder for fast creation?

-Rob

-- 
Robert Collins <rbtcollins at hp.com>
Distinguished Technologist
HP Cloud Services