base operating system property?

[Adrian Cole]

Hi, all.

It seems to me advantageous to have a templateBuilder expression that
can match a vanilla operating system. While not always the case, base
operating system images are generally free (or less costly), faster to
boot, and smaller.

Any objections to or alternative suggestions for putting a boolean
property isVanilla() or the like on the OperatingSystem object?

An example: in GoGrid, we'd not have to match the text "w/None"
anymore, and could rely on the isVanilla property.

wdyt?
-Adrian

[Fred Zappert]

How about using something like isBaseOS to avoid using an idiomatic expression?

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[Hugo Duncan]

On Mon, 20 Dec 2010 05:01:48 -0500, Adrian Cole <adrian...@gmail.com>
wrote:

> It seems to me advantageous to have a templateBuilder expression that
> can match a vanilla operating system. While not always the case, base
> operating system images are generally free (or less costly), faster to
> boot, and smaller.

This really sounds like a proxy for some other things we would like to be
able to specify, but probably lack the data for (isFree?, costPerHour,
imageSize, etc), so i think it's purpose and semantics need to be tied
down a little more.

eg. How would this work on services like ec2, where there is an open set
of images? Would there be one image for each OS marked as "vanilla"? or
would the multiple "free" images, with varying installed packages, be
marked as "vanilla"?

--
Hugo Duncan

[Adrian Cole]

I think imageSize, isBaseOs and isFree are different although normally follow a common pattern (ex. base is usually smaller and usually free).  I'd probably make these nullable, in case we have no info.  

The other property that's missing and comes up often is owner, which many clouds have. What do we think of adding the following properties?

image.isFree

image.size

image.owner

image.isBaseOs

We could add these also as templateBuilder expressions.  Pricing is hard to rationalize, which is why I've left it out.

-A

[Andrew Phillips]

First, an advance Merry Christmas to everyone on the list!

> image.isFree
> image.size
> image.owner
> image.isBaseOs

Adrian, could you clarify what the main use cases are here, as far as
you see it? I very much agree with Hugo's point that "isVanilla" seems
to try to capture an imprecisely defined set of service model
attributes, and that it would help to try to pin these down.

The cost (free vs. non-free, or some more granular version) driver would
obviously be covered by isFree. "owner" is an interesting attribute that
I'd be grateful if you could explain in some more detail. Is this a
question of rights you as a user of the image (do not) have?

How do you see "isBaseOs" being used when not related to the free/not
free distinction?

Thanks

ap

[Adrian Cole]

Happy holidays back at you!

Details on use cases embedded below, and here's the overall answer.

Images that are baseOs implies third party daemons or middleware are not installed.  For example, In amazon, a "ownerId" can be used to find base operating systems.  Amazon's linux, and canonical's ubuntu images are base operating systems.  Rightscale's centos probably has a rightscale agent on it.

BaseOs is related to cost, but not necessarily that it is free.  For example, in GoGrid baseOs implies that the image is free, except licensed operating systems like windows.  Sometimes licensing is strange, but explainable.  For example, In IBM dev cloud, the baseOs of RHEL costs more than the SuSe with websphere on it.  Specifics of pricing and licensing would make things really complicated.  We can advertise whether an image is free, which can help avoid troubles like my accidentally launching $60 gear6 images.

In other words, isBaseOs isn't a proxy for other things, but I'm glad to add properties for those other things :)

Make sense?
-A

On Wed, Dec 22, 2010 at 7:26 PM, Andrew Phillips <aphi...@qrmedia.com> wrote:

First, an advance Merry Christmas to everyone on the list!

@return true, if the image is free of charge, or null if we cannot verify if this is the case.

> image.isFree

 
@return size in bytes of the image, or null if not available.  Image size is often directly related to server creation time.

> image.size

@return the owner of the image, if available.  This is generally used to filter on images that are from a trusted supplier, ex. amazon, rightscale, canonical.  The id itself is opaque and provider-specific.

> image.owner

@return true if the operating system has a default installation of the operating system.  This can help filter out images that may have third party management agents or middleware installed.

> image.isBaseOs

Adrian, could you clarify what the main use cases are here, as far as you see it? I very much agree with Hugo's point that "isVanilla" seems to try to capture an imprecisely defined set of service model attributes, and that it would help to try to pin these down.

The cost (free vs. non-free, or some more granular version) driver would obviously be covered by isFree. "owner" is an interesting attribute that I'd be grateful if you could explain in some more detail. Is this a question of rights you as a user of the image (do not) have?

How do you see "isBaseOs" being used when not related to the free/not free distinction?

Thanks

ap

[Adrian Cole]

interesting related property from the ibm cloud api:

isMiniEphemeral: Whether or not the instance should be provisioned with the root
segment only. Compared to standard server size, this option will
provide less storage but same memory and CPU, and thus provision the
instance faster. The following is the value and its detail mean-ing:
• True: root only provision. • False: normal provision. This is the
default value.

[Adrian Cole]

guys, lack of an isBaseOs/owner property burns us, as people cannot
rely on configuration assumptions. This results in people having
problems depending on the run related to login ids, ssh properties,
etc. We gain nothing from troubleshooting these sorts of problems,
which are in practice coupled strongly to whether or not the image is
a base os or from a certain supplier. If anything, lack of these
details make template builder very impractical in amazon. Not
improving on this displaces my time and frustrates users.

Unless someone has a better way to describe these, we should add the
following properties to image on our next release:

> image.isFree
> image.size
> image.owner
> image.isBaseOs

Any objections?
-Adrian

On Dec 22 2010, 12:21 pm, Adrian Cole <adrian.f.c...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Happy holidays back at you!
>
> Details on use cases embedded below, and here's the overall answer.
>
> Images that are baseOs implies third party daemons or middleware are not
> installed.  For example, In amazon, a "ownerId" can be used to find base
> operating systems.  Amazon's linux, and canonical's ubuntu images are base
> operating systems.  Rightscale's centos probably has a rightscale agent on
> it.
>
> BaseOs is related to cost, but not necessarily that it is free.  For
> example, in GoGrid baseOs implies that the image is free, except licensed
> operating systems like windows.  Sometimes licensing is strange, but
> explainable.  For example, In IBM dev cloud, the baseOs of RHEL costs more
> than the SuSe with websphere on it.  Specifics of pricing and licensing
> would make things really complicated.  We can advertise whether an image is
> free, which can help avoid troubles like my accidentally launching $60 gear6
> images.
>
> In other words, isBaseOs isn't a proxy for other things, but I'm glad to add
> properties for those other things :)
>
> Make sense?
> -A
>

> > jclouds-dev...@googlegroups.com<jclouds-dev%2Bunsubscribe@googlegr oups.com>
> > .

[Adrian Cole]

whoops.. didn't necessarily mean to include isFree on this. That is
much harder to guarantee effective due to various ways people charge
for things.