resize of root filesystem from 15G to 10G for new ec2 ebs images

[Scott Moser]

Hi all,

I would like to get tech board approval to make a change to the default
filesystem size of our EC2 EBS-root [1] images from 15GB to 10GB.  This
request is entirely driven by the desire to fit into Amazon's newly
created "Free Usage Tier" [2] that was announced late October of 2010.
The change will allow Amazon customers run an instance of Ubuntu 10.04 or
10.10 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for 1 year.  Without that change,
if a use selects Ubuntu for their image type, they will pay $0.55 per
month ($ 0.11/GB-Month for the additional 5GB of storage).

There is a bug opened [3] requesting 10GB root filesystem images.

If this item needs discussion, I'd like to have it on the 2010-11-16
meeting agenda.

Thank you.
Scott

== some history / background ==
Ubuntu creates popular images that run on EC2 and publishes them to EC2.
In December of 2009, Amazon began allowing EC2 image producers such as
Ubuntu to create "EBS Root" images.  With EBS root images, the root
filesystem could be any size up to 1TB, the customer would pay per
provisioned GB.  At that time, Amazon made available some Fedora based
images that they had created with their release announcement.  Those
Fedora images had 15GB root disks.  When selecting a root filesystem size,
Ubuntu followed Amazon's lead and chose 15GB as well.

We refresh our images to update kernels and packages on a roughly monthly
basis [7].

Other bits of information:
 * I am not interested in creating (and maintaining) AMIs of both 10 and
   15GB root.
 * It is possible (and trivial) to launch instances with a block device
   larger than the default for an image.  Ie, a user can easily launch an
   instance with a 15G root volume and 'resize2fs /dev/sda1' if they want
   a 15G filesystem.
 * The images we produce contain less than 1GB of data on a filesystem.  A
   'df -h' shows '667M' Used on maverick images. 10.04 is similar.
 * bug 670161 comment 1 [4] has many reasons why reducing filesystem is
   not a big deal.
 * Without this change, it is plausible that users looking to try out EC2
   will do so with Amazon Linux AMI [5] or another OS.
 * It reasonably easy to launch your own one-off image [6]
 * At UDS we discussed making this change for Natty.  The changes are in
   place to make Natty use 10G root volumes.

The only reasons I can think for not doing this are:
 * It is a somewhat arbitrary event to respond to
 * The cost for a user is only $6.00 per year
 * This is a change to a stable release

--
[1] http://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2009/12/03/amazon-ec2-instances-now-can-boot-from-amazon-ebs/
[2] http://aws.amazon.com/free/
[3] https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu-on-ec2/+bug/670161
[4] https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu-on-ec2/+bug/670161/comments/1
[5] http://aws.amazon.com/amazon-linux-ami/
[6] http://ubuntu-smoser.blogspot.com/2010/11/using-ubunt-images-on-aws-free-tier.html
[7] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UEC/Images/RefreshPolicy