[ec2-beta] Automated bundling?

[Eric Hammond]

...not that I would object to an Ubuntu package which included a command 
to do the bundle and upload of a running instance :)   Some other public 
AMIs provide this and I think it's a fine idea.

The main considerations that pop into my head include:

1. Figure out how the user provides all of the parameters and key files 
by default.  If you require them to pass it all in, then it's not much 
easier than running the two below commands.  There are a number of 
software packages out there that have different standards for where and 
how AWS access identifiers are specified.  If Ubuntu software 
standardized on one of these it might be useful for future development.

2. Decide if the bundle/upload command should also register the AMI. 
The "ec2-register" command is in the EC2 API command line tools which 
require Java to be installed (not something I'd want on a base AMI given 
the size).  However, if you're writing your own software you might as 
well access the API directly to register the AMI.

3. Figure out what files and directories should be excluded from the 
bundle by default.  This depends in part on whether the resulting AMI is 
intended to be public or private.  For example, public AMIs should not 
include .ssh/authorized_keys files but private AMIs might want to keep 
these around.

--
Eric Hammond
ehammond at thinksome.com



Eric Hammond wrote:
> James:
> 
> When the image includes the EC2 AMI tools, rebundling a running instance 
> comes down to just a couple commands like:
> 
>    time ec2-bundle-vol              \
>      -r $arch                       \
>      -d /mnt                        \
>      -p $prefix                     \
>      -u $AWS_USER_ID                \
>      -k /mnt/pk-*.pem               \
>      -c /mnt/cert-*.pem             \
>      -s 10240
> 
>    ec2-upload-bundle                \
>        -b $bucket                   \
>        -m /mnt/$prefix.manifest.xml \
>        -a $AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID        \
>        -s $AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY
> 
>    ec2-register $bucket/$prefix.manifest.xml
> 
> You can find more in the EC2 Getting Started Guide:
> 
>    http://ec2gsg-creating.notlong.com
> 
> The hardest part of this is getting the private key and certificate 
> files uploaded to the instance.  Note: If you plan to make the image 
> public, there are other security considerations not suitable for this 
> short note.
> 
> The community Ubuntu AMIs on http://alestic.com already come with the 
> EC2 AMI tools installed and it looks like the official Ubuntu beta AMIs 
> should get them soon :)
> 
> If you want to build Ubuntu AMIs from scratch, I publish the 
> ec2ubuntu-build-ami script linked to from the "Build Script" section of 
> http://alestic.com which many folks are using.  There is also an EC2 
> plugin being developed for the new Ubuntu vmbuilder package which will 
> do the same thing when it is released.
> 
> That said, I generally recommend to folks that they not bundle their own 
> AMIs, but first try to use the user-data script hook to have a base 
> public AMI customize itself at boot.
> 
> Application data should never be stored on an AMI, but should be 
> accessed through EBS, S3, SimpleDB, or the like.
> 
> --
> Eric Hammond
> ehammond at thinksome.com
> 
> 
> 
> James Wyatt wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> Just a suggestion for dev efforts. The biggest barrier for a lot of ec2 
>> users is bundling their own AMIs. Automating this would greatly reduce 
>> the technical expertise required to effectively use ec2.
>>
>> Jim Wyatt
>>
>>
>