Changes/Move to ImageFactory For Cloud Image Creation

Comments and Explanations
IN PROGRESS - imcleod drafting

Move to ImageFactory For Cloud Image Creation

Summary

Create images using Anaconda in Koji rather than appliance-creator. Allows non-scratch builds with fedmsg integration for upload service, and also could produce official Docker images.

Owners

• Name: Ian McLeod, Dennis Gilmore
• Email: imcleod@redhat.com, dgilmore@fedoraproject.org
• Co-Owner
• Release notes owner:

Current status

• Targeted release: Fedora 21
• Last updated: 2014-04-07
• Tracker bug: <will be assigned by the Wrangler>

Detailed Description

Jay Greguske recently added a feature to koji that allows it to create full system disk images using Image Factory. These images can be output both as raw and qcow2 disk images, as well as OVA/OVF bundles compatible with OVirt, VMWare and RHEV-M. They are created by running Anaconda kickstart installs in virt containers and then packaging/encapsulating the results.

Benefit to Fedora

By using Anaconda itself to generate the image we eliminate the gap between the tooling used to generate cloud images (currently appliance-creator) and the tooling used to generate bare metal and "normal" virt images (Anaconda). Using Anaconda running inside of virt containers also eliminates any dependency on kernel-level features of the build system hosts. (e.g. - If we want to build a cloud image using a newly introduce or newly updated filesystem, we can do that.) Finally, using Anaconda means that we are coupled to a tool that is already essential to any given release and can be expected to work.

Scope

• Proposal owners: The Image Factory support in Fedora koji has already landed and images are already being built using this technique. The work for F21 should mainly involve making sure that the existing cloud kickstart files work when run directly by Anaconda and making any chances needed to ensure that they do.

• Other developers: N/A (not a System Wide Change)

• Release engineering: N/A (not a System Wide Change)

• Policies and guidelines: N/A (not a System Wide Change)

Upgrade/compatibility impact

N/A (not a System Wide Change)

How To Test

Build images inside of koji using the newly added Image Factory support. Deploy these images on the target cloud/virt environments and test for basic functionality and parity with existing appliance-creator based images.

User Experience

N/A (not a System Wide Change)

Dependencies

None that we are aware of. If Anaconda can be used to generate a working virtual machine image, the Image Factory support in koji can be used to create one.

Contingency Plan

• Contingency mechanism: Continue using appliance-creator
• Contingency deadline: TBD
• Blocks release? N/A (not a System Wide Change)

Documentation

TODO: Link to Jay Greguske HOWTO documentation