Re: improving documenation
On 4/28/21 7:00 PM, Jeremy Stanley wrote:
> On 2021-04-28 09:45:38 -0700 (-0700), Noah Meyerhans wrote:
> [...]
>> I suspect, but am not sure, that even in OpenStack environments, it's
>> the administrator that is going to be retrieving the images and
>> registering them with the service, and most users of those services
>> aren't going to need to download the images from us.
> [...]
>
> There are a few reasons why this isn't necessarily true:
>
> * Not all public cloud providers bother to include a Debian image in
> their catalogue.
>
> * Public cloud providers who do include a Debian image in their
> catalogue don't always refresh it in a timely manner.
>
> * Public cloud providers who do include a Debian image in their
> catalogue don't necessarily have an official Debian image because
> they sometimes inject additional default configuration, custom
> agent daemons, or make other similar tweaks.
>
> * Public cloud providers who do include a Debian image in their
> catalogue often only provide stable images, not testing/unstable
> snapshots.
>
> This is not theoretical, I have personally experienced all of the
> above.
Yeah.
One good thing about having your cloud provider upload the Debian image,
is that of course, that costs nothing to the users (they do not have to
pay for the stored image). So it would definitively be a competitive
advantage for a public cloud providers to always have up-to-date Debian
images. However, having this in an automated way isn't that trivial.
And that's why we should fix it by providing automation to get (at
least) the Debian image uploaded automatically. It would help a lot to
get Debian always up-to-date in public cloud providers. That's what my
colleague is currently working on (but not only for Debian).
I was wondering if it would make sense to get such work as free
software, shared between public cloud providers (and users) or if it
even already existed. We at least want to do it for ourselves, I'm not
sure if my colleagues will agree to share that work, but I'll try to be
convincing.
> Particularly for multi-cloud users, this quickly becomes
> frustrating because it can be impossible to maintain consistency
> when your servers are spread across different cloud providers. The
> user has effectively two solutions... 1. download images from
> debian.org and upload them into their accounts at each provider
> (this is what I do for my personal servers which are spread across a
> few different providers for redundancy); 2. build their own
> unofficial Debian images and upload those (this is what happens at
> my day job where we have applications which connect to more than a
> dozen different providers who donate accounts to us).
>
> I expect I'm a "power user" in this sense
You definitively count as one. :)
> so while I agree that the
> average user today is probably only going to have an account in a
> single provider and/or will otherwise likely be fine with the image
> that provider spoon-feeds them, "multi-cloud" is becoming a hot
> topic and normal users are turning into power users who will need
> similar solutions in the long run.
That's also a use case for such automatic image upload/update. :)
Cheers,
Thomas Goirand (zigo)
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