Intro / Disclaimer
First of all, long day : Ottawa Marathon sunday morning, then travel during the night then two hours delay in Frankfurt then ... Barcelona and UDS. Anyway, please forgive my poor grammar and style !
EC2 (Amazon), Eucalyptus (FLOSS) are part of the Karmic grand scheme of things. This session goals were to ease the integration of "The Cloud" into Ubuntu by fixing major issues and address ... futur ones.
The blueprint is here : https://blueprints.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/server-karmic-ec2-next-steps
Things were already started and I was slow to catch so once again, those are my notes and reflexion, use at your own risk.
Image update
Images are not updated in the cloud and kernel change can only be done by Ubuntu (at least on EC2).
(Later, some kexec possibility was invoked but ... it does not look very "clean" from an amazon viewpoint!). Thus, a mechanism has to be set up in order to have an inventory of the images used in the cloud. The usage of update-motd has been discussed as well as the eventual link with inventory systems and more advanced management systemes (Landscape).
Idea :
- Notification of new kernel and new images for the user running
- Exposing this information in landscape
- Not just EC2 but more or less for every technology out there (landscape, etc.)
Faster Boot Time / Ubuntu-minimal-minimal
faster boot time and faster image initialization for ec2? (Removing non essential packages such as bluetooth and trimming the inits)
-> Lots of useless packages where still deployed in the image
(same need for any virtual machine : KVM, VZ, etc.)
-> How do you plan to do it ?
EC2 and UEC image should be _really_ minimal.
-> Remove most of the "useless" packages
On a side note, this is true for every virtualization/container technology out there so I think that having a truly minimal (no sound, no USB, no udev, no kernel, etc.) will really help Ubuntu on the virtual side of server land !
AMI-tool and API-tool in sync
Keep in sync ami-tools and api-tools (Author: Neil XXX) (Amazon & Eucalyptus) when new released are published.
-> Where should this stored : it has to be on "archive.ubuntu.com" so that it can be accessed/
installed from the EC2/Eucalyptus ?
Problem with amazon software/licence/break compatibility ?
Documentation
- Amazon EC2 level of documentation ?
-> Very good
-> Leverage this ?
-> root vs sudo
-> take in charge of the differences
-> One documentation with basic principles & co
-> Then "EC2 and UEC" can be distinguished
Test & process :
-> Release the alpha & co ?
Problem : noone is forced to update -> we can have to manage bug reports & support users that uses alpha releases in production.
Someone said this (sorry, missed the name) and it is an excellent and valid point :
"We are certain to have _no_ testing if we don't release the images!"
As a consequence, we have to release the images ASAP and put a disclaimer
"This is an alpha release, not intended for production use"
This image will stop running the 20ab-cd-ef"
Some random ideas :
- Have a special account on Amazon EC2 for alpha testing / alpha images : once the testing phase is over, let,s stop paying this account !
- If "kexec/kboot" into the kernel available then it is possible to stop those AMI anytime. Lot's of people
mention that Amazon will certainly not be happy with this?
Desktop Image
We need a desktop image ?
- Bigger / more expensive ?
- The same kernel can be used
- Someone mention that vnc is barely usable on EC2
- NoX/Ulteo shoud be used as a way to remotely stream desktop (please see precedent post on Server Centric /Anywhere computing)
- Testing can be much more better with desktop images :
- Testing testing testing, translation, bugfix, automatically generated images, etc.
