Re: [CentOS] Adding an 'official' CentOS image to the Amazon EC2(Electronic Compute Cloud)

2009-06-03 Thread Richard Shade
On Wed, Jun 3, 2009 at 3:18 PM, Karanbir Singh  wrote:

> Hi Richard,
>
> On 06/03/2009 08:11 PM, Richard Shade wrote:
> > Sorry for not replying to this earlier, I just saw this thread because
> > of the newsletter. We have had CentOS Images running in the cloud since
> > 09/06/2007,
>
> When I got in touch with amazon a long long time back, the aim was to
> plumb in something into the centos buildsystems, so that we are able to
> churn out an 'official' CentOS image at the same time as we do a release
> for isos etc. They were quite keen initially, but something happened -
> might be related to Martin Buhr moving, and they lost most interest.

Yeah, I have no idea why they decided not to pursue this, however, to
them it could seem to hard to manage many distributions.

>
>
> I would *really* like to get that project back on track. If not then we
> can go the route of just having images that others can use, perhaps not
> from something that amazon provide themselves.

I would be glad to help you with this project. You will need an AmazonAWS
account to
put the images in.

>
>
> > http://s3.amazonaws.com/rightscale_scripts/CentOS5_2V4_0_2_Beta.sh, if
> > you want to roll your own. If anyone needs any help or has any question
> > on this shoot me an email. Also thanks to the CentOS team for all your
> > hard work.
>
> Its always good to know that the work is appreciated! Btw, I've heard
> good things about what you guys are doing at rightscale as well.
>

Thanks, good to hear..

>
>
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Re: [CentOS] Adding an 'official' CentOS image to the Amazon EC2(Electronic Compute Cloud)

2009-06-03 Thread Karanbir Singh
Hi Richard,

On 06/03/2009 08:11 PM, Richard Shade wrote:
> Sorry for not replying to this earlier, I just saw this thread because
> of the newsletter. We have had CentOS Images running in the cloud since
> 09/06/2007,

When I got in touch with amazon a long long time back, the aim was to 
plumb in something into the centos buildsystems, so that we are able to 
churn out an 'official' CentOS image at the same time as we do a release 
for isos etc. They were quite keen initially, but something happened - 
might be related to Martin Buhr moving, and they lost most interest.

I would *really* like to get that project back on track. If not then we 
can go the route of just having images that others can use, perhaps not 
from something that amazon provide themselves.

> http://s3.amazonaws.com/rightscale_scripts/CentOS5_2V4_0_2_Beta.sh, if
> you want to roll your own. If anyone needs any help or has any question
> on this shoot me an email. Also thanks to the CentOS team for all your
> hard work.

Its always good to know that the work is appreciated! Btw, I've heard 
good things about what you guys are doing at rightscale as well.


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[CentOS] Adding an 'official' CentOS image to the Amazon EC2(Electronic Compute Cloud)

2009-06-03 Thread Richard Shade
Sorry for not replying to this earlier, I just saw this thread because of
the newsletter. We have had CentOS Images running in the cloud since
09/06/2007, and there have had a public script out for it, you can check us
out in the Amazon catalog here:
http://developer.amazonwebservices.com/connect/entry!default.jspa?categoryID=208&externalID=1901&fromSearchPage=true.
This also has a build script here:
http://s3.amazonaws.com/rightscale_scripts/CentOS5_2V4_0_2_Beta.sh, if you
want to roll your own. If anyone needs any help or has any question on this
shoot me an email. Also thanks to the CentOS team for all your hard work.

-- 
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Richard Shade
RightScale
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Re: [CentOS] Adding an 'official' CentOS image to the Amazon EC2(Electronic Compute Cloud)

2009-05-08 Thread Sean Carolan
> You are missing the point, imho. I think the real issue, for me anyway,
> is that Amazon is actively discouraging what is essentially a community,
> in spite of the fact that they and many of their users rely on the
> community to get things done, both work and play.

Indeed.  The entire infrastructure is built on Linux and Xen virtual
machines.  One would think they'd be a bit more friendly and
communicative to the CentOS organization.
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Re: [CentOS] Adding an 'official' CentOS image to the Amazon EC2(Electronic Compute Cloud)

2009-05-08 Thread Jason Aubrey
> Why dont you go ahead and document the build
> process, and I can plumb that into the distro-build scripts.

That's a great idea - it was my intention.  However, I've been
unsuccessful thus far.
I was able to create an image that booted but I was unable to ssh to
the box afterwards...
Someone with more Linux or Xen experience may have more success with it.
Unfortunately, I've run out of time to pursue it on this project.  I
hate throwing in the towel... grr.

Right Scale publishes some 5.2 CentOS images on Amazon so I've decided
to use one of those as a base image.

> workaround to what ? Amazon being hostile to open source projects ?
Yeah.
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Re: [CentOS] Adding an 'official' CentOS image to the Amazon EC2(Electronic Compute Cloud)

2009-05-08 Thread Karanbir Singh
Jason Aubrey wrote:
> For making an image public, it would obviously be great if Amazon
> would sponsor the image...

You are missing the point, imho. I think the real issue, for me anyway, 
is that Amazon is actively discouraging what is essentially a community, 
in spite of the fact that they and many of their users rely on the 
community to get things done, both work and play.

> However, if this isn't the case maybe centos.org could publish an
> image identifier(s) on their website and then have it labeled 'public'
> on the AWS console.

Well, what is centos.org ? Why dont you go ahead and document the build 
process, and I can plumb that into the distro-build scripts.

> Each image has a unique identifier used to instantiate it, so as long
> as centos.org publishes approved ids then that would be a pretty good
> work around in my opinion.

workaround to what ? Amazon being hostile to open source projects ?

- KB
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Re: [CentOS] Adding an 'official' CentOS image to the Amazon EC2(Electronic Compute Cloud)

2009-05-07 Thread Jason Aubrey
I don't have much experience with AWS yet, so I can't speak to any
support issues.
We're looking at leveraging it for automated builds initially
(occasional up time) for proprietary and open source projects.

For making an image public, it would obviously be great if Amazon
would sponsor the image...
However, if this isn't the case maybe centos.org could publish an
image identifier(s) on their website and then have it labeled 'public'
on the AWS console.
Each image has a unique identifier used to instantiate it, so as long
as centos.org publishes approved ids then that would be a pretty good
work around in my opinion.

Jason Aubrey
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Re: [CentOS] Adding an 'official' CentOS image to the Amazon EC2(Electronic Compute Cloud)

2009-05-07 Thread nate
Jason Pyeron wrote:

> "Inexpensive - Amazon EC2 passes on to you the financial benefits of
> Amazon's
> scale. You pay a very low rate for the compute capacity you actually
> consume."

Which is kinda funny since it's not true in many situations. My
company did a cost analysis of using the Amazon cloud vs doing it
ourselves, and the cloud cost at Amazon was more than double
what we would pay if we did it ourselves(TCO over a 3 year period).
And that's just the cost of the services themselves.

We do need hundreds of megabits of internet bandwidth, and lots of
CPU cycles as well as I/O cycles(and disk space), in the micro
pay model that Amazon has it adds up fast.. I'm sure it's more
cost effective if the stuff your doing sits idle most of the time.

We also priced out a premium enterprise provider that used VMware
enterprise and they came in at about 4x the cost of doing it
ourselves, CPU cycles in VMware enterprise are of course a lot
more expensive than non-vmware or even VMware foundation.

The premium enterprise VMWare vendor(Terremark) came within about
$15k of the cost of using Rackspace managed hosting(bare metal)
to do the same over a 3 year period which I thought was very
interesting, shows how expensive managed hosting can be as
well(we weren't looking for much software on hands support but
rather hardware support, leasing the equipment through them etc).

So not surprisingly we're doing it ourselves, which makes me
happy as an infrastructure guy. Building new sites and setting
up new things is something that keeps me happy.

I interviewed some guy for an operations position last week who
was proud of the fact they had migrated to the cloud, and it
was working great. Then I asked him what kind of traffic do
they get and how many servers? They got something like 10,000
requests a DAY, and they had 2 or 3 servers.  Big whoop!

nate


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Re: [CentOS] Adding an 'official' CentOS image to the Amazon EC2(Electronic Compute Cloud)

2009-05-07 Thread Jason Pyeron

> -Original Message-
> From: centos-boun...@centos.org 
> [mailto:centos-boun...@centos.org] On Behalf Of Sean Carolan
> Sent: Thursday, May 07, 2009 11:06
> To: CentOS mailing list
> Subject: Re: [CentOS] Adding an 'official' CentOS image to 
> the Amazon EC2(Electronic Compute Cloud)
> 
> > So, unless they are happy to come back and start talking to 
> us again I 
> > highly recommend everyone not bother using EC2.
> >
> > - KB
> 
> I had the exact same experience when trying to get a sales 
> rep to talk to me about hosting an application for my 
> company.  We need to know that someone will be there to pick 
> up the phone when there are problems, and I couldn't get 
> anyone to call me back to answer my questions.  I guess 
> Amazon doesn't care too much about the customer service end 
> of AWS.  We'd feel a lot more confident about putting our 
> application onto their cloud if someone would at least return 
> my phone calls and emails.  So not too surprising that they 
> gave you the brush-off, given that they won't even call back 
> a customer with dollars in hand, ready to spend.

Quoting from their website:

"Inexpensive - Amazon EC2 passes on to you the financial benefits of Amazon's
scale. You pay a very low rate for the compute capacity you actually consume."

Remember, these are surplus resources that would otherwise be cost of doing
business. 

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Re: [CentOS] Adding an 'official' CentOS image to the Amazon EC2 (Electronic Compute Cloud)

2009-05-07 Thread Sean Carolan
> So, unless they are happy to come back and start talking to us again I
> highly recommend everyone not bother using EC2.
>
> - KB

I had the exact same experience when trying to get a sales rep to talk
to me about hosting an application for my company.  We need to know
that someone will be there to pick up the phone when there are
problems, and I couldn't get anyone to call me back to answer my
questions.  I guess Amazon doesn't care too much about the customer
service end of AWS.  We'd feel a lot more confident about putting our
application onto their cloud if someone would at least return my phone
calls and emails.  So not too surprising that they gave you the
brush-off, given that they won't even call back a customer with
dollars in hand, ready to spend.
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Re: [CentOS] Adding an 'official' CentOS image to the Amazon EC2 (Electronic Compute Cloud)

2009-05-07 Thread Michael Simpson
On 07/05/2009, Karanbir Singh  wrote:
> Jason Aubrey wrote:
> > I'm starting to use the EC2 cloud (as are others) and noticed that all
> > the available CentOS images seem to be of dubious origin.
> > I think it would further the reputation and popularity of CentOS if it
> > were represented in an official way.
>
> I started talking to Amazon about this a long time back ( early Feb 2008
>  - refer to posts on the centos-virt list ) and was quite interested in
> making things easier for people who might want to use CentOS images on
> EC2 - and their response at the time was semi-warm. After a few emails
> to and fro, I even agreed ( against usual principles ) to sign a NDA
> that they sent over so that we could move the situation forward.
> However, their continued attitude to the issue amounted to : go away, we
> dont care about you so stop wasting our time. Another way to interpret
> it is : give us loads of money and we'll talk to you, till then, stop
> wasting our time.
>
> So, unless they are happy to come back and start talking to us again I
> highly recommend everyone not bother using EC2.
>

yeah, we played around with it for a while and still use it for the
occasional demo.
It is a bit of a chore creating a machine image form one of your
servers but once it is done then that is that.
-unless your image is using one of the public ip addresses that has
made it onto a blacklist.
We find the s3 file storage and cloudfront content delivery service
much more useful.

mike
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Re: [CentOS] Adding an 'official' CentOS image to the Amazon EC2 (Electronic Compute Cloud)

2009-05-07 Thread Karanbir Singh
Jason Aubrey wrote:
> I'm starting to use the EC2 cloud (as are others) and noticed that all
> the available CentOS images seem to be of dubious origin.
> I think it would further the reputation and popularity of CentOS if it
> were represented in an official way.

I started talking to Amazon about this a long time back ( early Feb 2008 
  - refer to posts on the centos-virt list ) and was quite interested in 
making things easier for people who might want to use CentOS images on 
EC2 - and their response at the time was semi-warm. After a few emails 
to and fro, I even agreed ( against usual principles ) to sign a NDA 
that they sent over so that we could move the situation forward. 
However, their continued attitude to the issue amounted to : go away, we 
dont care about you so stop wasting our time. Another way to interpret 
it is : give us loads of money and we'll talk to you, till then, stop 
wasting our time.

So, unless they are happy to come back and start talking to us again I 
highly recommend everyone not bother using EC2.

- KB
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Re: [CentOS] Adding an 'official' CentOS image to the Amazon EC2 (Electronic Compute Cloud)

2009-05-07 Thread Ralph Angenendt
Jason Aubrey wrote:
> In case people aren't aware, when you create an AWS (Amazon Web
> Services) account there's a management console that shows a list of
> available images.  Of this list, some are published by Amazon, others
> are uploaded anonymously, or you can upload your own.  Given the
> dubious nature of an anonymous image and a lack of an Amazon image for
> CentOS, I'm left in the third camp - creating/bundling/uploading my
> own.  Luckily I have the required 64 bit hardware to generate a 64 bit
> image!  Selfishly I'd love to just start up an existing image
> published by centos.org but one's not available.

Do you have an idea of what is exspected/needs to be done to create such
an image?

Ralph


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Re: [CentOS] Adding an 'official' CentOS image to the Amazon EC2 (Electronic Compute Cloud)

2009-05-07 Thread John R Pierce
Jason Aubrey wrote:
> I don't know if it's xen under the hood or not (not much experience
> with this sort of thing).  However, 'xen' is mentioned in the
> following link which I'm following so perhaps it is xen related:
> http://docs.amazonwebservices.com/AWSEC2/2009-03-01/DeveloperGuide/index.html?ami-via-loopback.html
>
>   

fromw hat I can tell, they are just creating a temp yum repo conf file 
to specify what repos to install from and calling it |yum-xen.conf for 
some reason.   they then use that .conf file with yum like...|

||*|yum -c /||/ 
--installroot=/||/ -y groupinstall Base

and install the 'base' group to the loopback mount, which populates the file 
system image.


|*

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Re: [CentOS] Adding an 'official' CentOS image to the Amazon EC2 (Electronic Compute Cloud)

2009-05-06 Thread Jason Aubrey
I don't know if it's xen under the hood or not (not much experience
with this sort of thing).  However, 'xen' is mentioned in the
following link which I'm following so perhaps it is xen related:
http://docs.amazonwebservices.com/AWSEC2/2009-03-01/DeveloperGuide/index.html?ami-via-loopback.html

I'm not all the way through this link so I can't vouch for it's
utility but it's good thus far.

Jason
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Re: [CentOS] Adding an 'official' CentOS image to the Amazon EC2 (Electronic Compute Cloud)

2009-05-06 Thread Gavin Carr
On Wed, May 06, 2009 at 10:11:07PM -0700, Michael A. Peters wrote:
> I run CentOS inside a xen at linode - they have a 5.0 image and I 
> believe a 4.x image. They only have i386, I don't know if a home brewed 
> x86_64 image would work but it doesn't really matter for me since I'm 
> only using my instance as a web server (fully updated to 5.3, and 
> customized with EPEL and my own php build).

Linode now do CentOS 5.2, both i386 and x86_64, according to this:

  http://www.linode.com/faq.cfm

Cheers,
Gavin

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Re: [CentOS] Adding an 'official' CentOS image to the Amazon EC2 (Electronic Compute Cloud)

2009-05-06 Thread Michael A. Peters
Jason Aubrey wrote:
> I'm starting to use the EC2 cloud (as are others) and noticed that all
> the available CentOS images seem to be of dubious origin.
> I think it would further the reputation and popularity of CentOS if it
> were represented in an official way.
> 
> In case people aren't aware, when you create an AWS (Amazon Web
> Services) account there's a management console that shows a list of
> available images.  Of this list, some are published by Amazon, others
> are uploaded anonymously, or you can upload your own.

I haven't heard of it before. It looks interesting.
Is it basically a xen, or is it it's own environment?

I run CentOS inside a xen at linode - they have a 5.0 image and I 
believe a 4.x image. They only have i386, I don't know if a home brewed 
x86_64 image would work but it doesn't really matter for me since I'm 
only using my instance as a web server (fully updated to 5.3, and 
customized with EPEL and my own php build).

Anyway, I suspect xen (or similar) virtual machines are soon to be the 
standard way non-managed web serving accounts with shell access is done.

My previous host - the people were good, I requested some perl / tcl 
modules and they were installed, but then when they upgraded the OS my 
site broke and I had to request them again. Then they changed server 
operating systems (a good move - they were running a bleeding edge 
distro and they moved to debian stable) the uid/gid of apache changed 
and they didn't use the old uid/gid breaking apache write permission and 
I could not run chown myself so I had to file a ticket, etc. - with xen 
virtual machines, I never have to file a request ticket as I have root 
so it is better both for me and the hosting company and it is 
inexpensive enough that it undoubtedly will soon be the standard way 
anything more than basic web hosting and less than managed web hosting 
is done.

To get to my point, I think it would thus be beneficial for CentOS to 
produce an official virtual machine image for servers that providers can 
use and/or users can upload and use on providers that don't offer a 
CentOS image.

It should be a small image with basically just the server install, once 
running in xen users can yum install whatever they need to their hearts 
content.

I don't know who created the image linode uses, it was missing some 
stuff a server should have (IE screen and alpine, though alpine I 
believe is EPEL and not rhel/centos) but was missing very little and was 
a very complete basic server.
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Re: [CentOS] Adding an 'official' CentOS image to the Amazon EC2 (Electronic Compute Cloud)

2009-05-06 Thread Sean Carolan
> Interestingly one is available from Amazon for both Fedora and Windows.

I would also like to see a plain vanilla, minimal 64 bit centos image
on Amazon AWS.
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[CentOS] Adding an 'official' CentOS image to the Amazon EC2 (Electronic Compute Cloud)

2009-05-06 Thread Jason Aubrey
I'm starting to use the EC2 cloud (as are others) and noticed that all
the available CentOS images seem to be of dubious origin.
I think it would further the reputation and popularity of CentOS if it
were represented in an official way.

In case people aren't aware, when you create an AWS (Amazon Web
Services) account there's a management console that shows a list of
available images.  Of this list, some are published by Amazon, others
are uploaded anonymously, or you can upload your own.  Given the
dubious nature of an anonymous image and a lack of an Amazon image for
CentOS, I'm left in the third camp - creating/bundling/uploading my
own.  Luckily I have the required 64 bit hardware to generate a 64 bit
image!  Selfishly I'd love to just start up an existing image
published by centos.org but one's not available.

Interestingly one is available from Amazon for both Fedora and Windows.

Jason
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