VM export for EC2

#1

Post by gtaylor » Fri, May 25, 2012, 8:33 PM UTC

Re: VM export for EC2

#2

Post by aychedee » Fri, May 25, 2012, 9:08 PM UTC

Let's hope they support Linux exports soon then. This solves another problem as well, which is easily moving images around availability zones.

Re: VM export for EC2

#3

Post by ben1040 » Fri, May 25, 2012, 9:18 PM UTC

aychedee wrote: post #2

Let's hope they support Linux exports soon then. This solves another problem as well, which is easily moving images around availability zones.

Imports, too - they launched an import tool about a year and a half ago, but it too only supports Windows.

Re: VM export for EC2

#4

Post by newhouseb » Fri, May 25, 2012, 9:21 PM UTC

This is awesome - what would be the remaining use case/advantage for using an AMI when you can now snapshot to more widely supported formats and import them?

Edit: Oh, this is windows only, significantly less exciting. I wonder why linux isn't supported?

Re: VM export for EC2

#5

Post by [deleted] » Fri, May 25, 2012, 9:25 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: VM export for EC2

#6

Post by jeffbarr » Fri, May 25, 2012, 9:28 PM UTC

ben1040 wrote: post #3

aychedee wrote: post #2

Let's hope they support Linux exports soon then. This solves another problem as well, which is easily moving images around availability zones.

Imports, too - they launched an import tool about a year and a half ago, but it too only supports Windows.

We plan to support additional operating systems in the future, along with more virtualization formats.

Re: VM export for EC2

#7

Post by [deleted] » Fri, May 25, 2012, 9:35 PM UTC

newhouseb wrote: post #4

This is awesome - what would be the remaining use case/advantage for using an AMI when you can now snapshot to more widely supported formats and import them? Edit: Oh, this is windows only, significantly less exciting. I wonder why linux isn't supported?

[deleted]

Re: VM export for EC2

#8

Post by cperciva » Fri, May 25, 2012, 9:37 PM UTC

newhouseb wrote: post #4

This is awesome - what would be the remaining use case/advantage for using an AMI when you can now snapshot to more widely supported formats and import them? Edit: Oh, this is windows only, significantly less exciting. I wonder why linux isn't supported?

I wonder why linux isn't supported?

Linux runs on EC2 via Xen/PV, which is a kernel-hypervisor interface not provided by other (non-Xen) virtualization systems. Exporting linux AMIs would require reaching inside your filesystem and modifying your kernel, which is far outside of the scope of anything Amazon would want to do (both in terms of "really complicated" and "liable to accidentally break things"). The same applies to importing images, of course.

[I don't work for Amazon and I don't speak for Amazon. The above is speculation based on information published by Amazon about EC2.]

Re: VM export for EC2

#9

Post by cperciva » Fri, May 25, 2012, 9:38 PM UTC

aychedee wrote: post #2

Let's hope they support Linux exports soon then. This solves another problem as well, which is easily moving images around availability zones.

moving images around availability zones

Presumably you mean regions here? Within any one region, you can use an AMI in any of the availability zones.

Re: VM export for EC2

#10

Post by jsprinkles » Fri, May 25, 2012, 9:50 PM UTC

cperciva wrote: post #8

newhouseb wrote: post #4

This is awesome - what would be the remaining use case/advantage for using an AMI when you can now snapshot to more widely supported formats and import them? Edit: Oh, this is windows only, significantly less exciting. I wonder why linux isn't supported?

I wonder why linux isn't supported? Linux runs on EC2 via Xen/PV, which is a kernel-hypervisor interface not provided by other (non-Xen) virtualization systems. Exporting linux AMIs would require reaching inside your filesystem and modifying your kernel, which is far outside of the scope of anything Amazon would want to do (both in terms of "really complicated" and "liable to accidentally break things"). The same app…

Kernel isn't a big deal, Colin. An entire filesystem should boot the same when exported. If you rsync / elsewhere, twiddle a few knobs like network config then reboot, you should be able to move an Amazon image anywhere. I have successfully done this between disparate virtualization providers, and Xen to dedicated.

Amazon is unique in that they use PV-Grub everywhere to boot a customer filesystem kernel (newer behavior), whereas on other virtualization providers like Linode, the kernel is selected at domain creation time by the hypervisor, and loaded from the hypervisor's filesystem (not the customer). You can use PV-Grub but it's opt-in, not opt-out.