Hello, A blueprint has been registered regarding API additions to Nova to enable the creation of base images from external OS install sources. This provides a way to build images from scratch via native OS installer tools using only the resources provided through Nova. These images can then be further customized by other tools that expect an existing image as an input, such as disk image builder. Blueprint - https://blueprints.launchpad.net/nova/+spec/base-image-creation Specification - https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/NovaImageCreationAPI If this is a topic that interests you, please have a look (the spec is not very long) and join the conversation. Please note that this blueprint follows on from proof of concept work for native image building discussed on this list in April: http://lists.openstack.org/pipermail/openstack-dev/2013-April/007157.html Thank you, -Ian