Features/BoxGrinder

Feature Name BoxGrinder

Summary

BoxGrinder creates appliances (virtual machines) from simple plain text appliance definition files for various virtual platforms.

Owner

• Name: Marek Goldmann

• Email: mgoldman@redhat.com

Current status

• Targeted release: Fedora 15
• Last updated: 2010-11-12
• Percentage of completion: 60%
• Packages submitted for review:
  • rubygem-boxgrinder-core (NEW)
  • rubygem-boxgrinder-build (NEW)
  • rubygem-boxgrinder-build-rpm-based-os-plugin (NEW)
  • rubygem-boxgrinder-build-fedora-os-plugin (NEW)
  • rubygem-boxgrinder-build-vmware-platform-plugin (NEW)
  • rubygem-boxgrinder-build-local-delivery-plugin (NEW)
  • rubygem-boxgrinder-build-sftp-delivery-plugin (NEW)
  • rubygem-boxgrinder-build-s3-delivery-plugin (need to fix BGBUILD-55 first)
  • rubygem-boxgrinder-build-ec2-platform-plugin (waiting for S3 delivery plugin)
  • rubygem-boxgrinder-build-ebs-delivery-plugin (waiting for S3 delivery plugin)

Detailed Description

BoxGrinder is a set of tools used for building appliances (virtual machines) for various platforms (KVM, Xen, VMware, EC2).

BoxGrinder creates appliances (images/virtual machines) from simple plain text Appliance Definition Files. There are only two simple steps to create an appliance:

1. Create Appliance Definition File
2. Run BoxGrinder. BoxGrinder will download all necessary artifact, build the instance, convert it to selected platform and upload it to selected destination. All in one process!

See Quick start page for more info.

Appliance definition file

Example appliance definition file:

name: f14-jeos
summary: Just Enough Operating System based on Fedora 14
os:
  name: fedora
  version: 14
hardware:
  partitions:
    "/":
      size: 2
packages:
  includes:
    - @core

BoxGrinder Build architecture

How it works

BoxGrinder Build has a plugin architecture. We can distinguish three types:

1. Operating System plugins – generating base appliance for selected OS,
2. Platform plugins – creating converted base appliance for selected platform (VMware, EC2),
3. Delivery plugins – designed to deliver your new appliance to a specified location. For example as a tar file to a remote server or just register as AMI on EC2.

Benefit to Fedora

Creating and delivering Fedora-based appliances to various virtual platforms like KVM, VMware, EC2.

Scope

Watch review request, fix all specs to meets Fedora Guidelines.

How To Test

1. Save sample appliance definition file as f14-jeos.appl.
2. Create local delivery plugin configuration file, and store it as $HOME/.boxgrinder/plugins/local.
3. Install and run BoxGrinder.

Sample local delivery plugin configuration file

path: /home/goldmann/builds
overwrite: false               # default: false
package: true                  # default: true

Commands to execute

yum install rubygem-boxgrinder-build-fedora-os-plugin rubygem-boxgrinder-build-vmware-platform-plugin
boxgrinder-build jeos-f14.appl -p vmware -d local

It should produce a virtual machine, convert it to VMware format and store in /home/goldmann/builds dir as tarred file.

User Experience

BoxGrinder will allow for easy and fast appliance creation and delivery.

Dependencies

• ruby
• appliance-tools
• libguestfs
• yum-utils
• various rubygems
  • rubygem-hashery (NEW)

Contingency Plan

BoxGrinder is already released and packaged. It only needs to be reviewed and included, but if this fails we're still able to install BoxGrinder using RubyGems and gem install command.

Documentation

• Main BoxGrinder documentation page
• BoxGrinder Build plugins
• BoxGrinder Build Quick start
• BoxGrinder appliance definition file explained

Release Notes

• 0.6.3 Release notes
• Previous versions

Comments and Discussion

• See Talk:Features/BoxGrinder

Help

If you need help – please contact us. We're available on IRC (#boxgrinder/irc.freenode.net) and on forums.