Paul,

On Mon, Apr 5, 2010 at 8:04 PM, Paul Querna <[email protected]> wrote:

> Fundamentally, I believe most providers do not want a complicated
> system tied to booting nodes -- I believe any design needs to enable
> them to already leverage their existing methods of distributing
> images [...]
> I believe the best way of integration for a provider, would be to add
> a create image call to their API, which took a manifest file as the
> payload.
> [...] There is some discussion about the details of what
> is included in the create_image call [...]

That is a very sensible approach.

>   The Provider would then return to the user an ID for this
> image.  Inside the manifest file, it would reference a URL to a
> tarball which contained the filesystem.  (There is some discussion
> about the details of what is included in the create_image call, do you
> PUT the whole tarball, reference it, encrypt it, sign it, etc, but IMO
> these are details to be worked out, not a fundamental change in
> architecture.)

Agreed. The important things to remember are:

1- The user can create a provider-specific image from a custom cloudlet
 
2- The user experience for booting images remains exactly the same as today

3- We still have to figure out the best delivery mechanism. Whatever that turns 
out to be, the cloudlets format will evolve to accommodate it.    

4. We are super-interested in getting feedback from hosting providers.

> The key piece of software that would need to be constructed, is a
> Cloudlets Rendering service. [...]

> 
> Sebastien and Solomon are discussing how to implement a demo of the
> Cloudlets Rendering Service, built on top of Amazon EC2. [...]

>  I think as long as we made it in easily
> 
> replaceable modules, I think we can make it work for everyone.

Let us know if there's anything you'd like to see in the demo, beyond EC2. A 
favorite image format, distro, storage mechanism? We're all ears.


PS we don't have cloudlets.com unfortunately. Check out http://gocloudlet.org. 
It's better than nothing :)

Best,

-- 
Solomon Hykes
@solomonstre
dotcloud.com

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