[Mark Meyer] Re: AWS + OpenStack support

[Mark Meyer <mark@ofosos.org>]

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Sorry, didn't go to the list.


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From: Mark Meyer <mark@ofosos.org>
To: Chris Marusich <cmmarusich@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: AWS + OpenStack support
Date: Tue, 11 Apr 2017 07:45:08 +0200
Message-ID: <878tn7h50b.fsf@ofosos.org>

>>>>> "Chris" == Chris Marusich <cmmarusich@gmail.com> writes:

    Chris> Mark Meyer <mark@ofosos.org> 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
   mark@ofosos.org

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-- 
   Mark Meyer
   mark@ofosos.org