--- Begin Message ---
|
Subject: |
Re: AWS + OpenStack support |
|
Date: |
Tue, 11 Apr 2017 07:45:08 +0200 |
|
User-agent: |
Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/25.1 (gnu/linux) |
>>>>> "Chris" == Chris Marusich <address@hidden> writes:
Chris> Mark Meyer <address@hidden> writes:
Chris> I think it'd be awesome if this were easier to do! This
Chris> topic has come up before:
Chris> https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2017-03/msg00757.html
Chris> https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/help-guix/2016-11/msg00075.html
Ah. I completely missed the latter discussion.
Chris> Long story short, instead of starting with a base image and
Chris> modifying it (e.g., by injecting credentials at first boot
Chris> via the EC2 metadata service), one appealing alternative is
Chris> to use EC2's VM import feature to actually import precisely
Chris> the system that you want to launch:
Chris> https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/vm-import/
Which does not work with GuixSD (tried it). Apparently it looks into the
image an expects stuff like fstab. I find it not very trust building
that it actually inspects the image.
Chris> Customizations, such as SSH credentials, would be specified
Chris> in a GuixSD operating system configuration file and built
Chris> into the VM image, so neither the EC2 metadata service, nor
Chris> hacks like the "cloud-init" script used by some distros,
Chris> would enter into the picture at all.
Chris> Some preliminary work in a similar spirit was already done in
Chris> the branch 'wip-deploy', but I don't think it was
Chris> EC2-specific in any way. Perhaps by looking there, you can
Chris> find some inspiration?
Here the immediate downside would be that stuff like auto-scaling does
not work out of the box. Which some people consider one of the selling
features of AWS, the prices for VM hosting being rather high.
Chris> I think it would be better to spend your energy on creating a
Chris> mechanism that allows an individual to build a GuixSD image
Chris> from their own operating system configuration file, import
Chris> that into EC2, and then launch an instance from it. If such
Chris> a feature were available in GuixSD, you could do it once from
Chris> a desktop/laptop with a slow internet connection to create a
Chris> "control server" in the cloud (with a fast internet
Chris> connection), and then you could run it from the control
Chris> server as needed to quickly spin up whatever other instances
Chris> you might need.
I think the above steps could be shortened somewhat and automated, if
you know you're running on ec2.
I don't see a way to cleanly import an image into AWS. This is however
different for OpenStack, there you have an image service that does just
what we need.
I'll try my hand at optimizing these steps on the weekend.
Cheer, Mark
--
Mark Meyer
address@hidden
--- End Message ---