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Announcing VM Import for Amazon EC2
- ronnier 16y agoHopefully VirtualBox support will be added at some point. It's amazing what Amazon is doing with AWS.
- simonw 16y agoInteresting that they support importing VMware images - I was under the impression that EC2 used Xen.
- unshift 16y agothey do. the import just changes the virtual disk format, the same way vmware converter can import xen images, MS hyper-V images, MS virtual desktop images, etc.
- logic 16y agoConverting between image types isn't too big of a deal; qemu-img can convert between most of your common on-disk formats (including VMDK), and wouldn't be hard to extend to whatever they're using behind the scenes.
- borism 16y agoI wonder if I can convert my old dusty Win XP Parallels image and VM-import it into EC2... That would be pretty cool!
- jeffbarr 16y agoWe support specific versions of Windows 2008 SP2 at present, with plans to add other versions and other OS's over time, with a focus on server OSs (as opposed to desktop).
- boredguy8 16y agoThis is an amazing change that hugely reduces the cost of transitioning to AWS. We're deploying VMs on Xen at our university and have talked about AWS but there's a high 'coefficient of static friction'. This could change that whole discussion. Well played.
- borism 16y agoDoes that answer my question? IIRC Windows Server 2003 was quite similar in HW reqs to XP, so should 2008 support it?
- Locke1689 16y agoVMDK is an open (GPL compatible) specification used by a number of different VMMs.
- gcr 16y agoHuh? What does it mean when a specification is GPL-Compatible? I was under the impression that an implementation of a specification was GPL-compatible or not.
- Locke1689 16y agoGood question. First, a specification is technically under copyright and GPL doesn't just apply to software so the GPL should probably be able to be applied to non-software, but the following wording from their press release makes me think that it also covers implementations of the spec: "VMware, the global leader in virtual infrastructure software for industry-standard systems, today announced that its virtual machine disk format specification for defining and formatting virtual machine environments is now openly available, downloadable and free of charge. This will enable use by all developers, software vendors and projects and includes open licensing compatible with those operating under open source licenses such as the GPL."
- petercooper 16y agoThough it's less than widescale support: The VM Import process currently supports VMware VMDK images for Windows Server 2008 SP2.
- rythie 16y agoI'd like to see export.
- eli 16y agoOut of curiosity, how do people currently build a custom new EC2 image? Spin up a base instance and then run a script?
- jolan 16y agoIf you're using Ubuntu, they have a tool for creating new EC2 images called python-vm-builder-ec2.
- troels 16y agoThere's in fact a whole command line suite, which you can script anything through.
- ollysb 16y agoWe start with a base image and then use puppet to manage anything that needs to be installed/setup.
- cowmixtoo 16y agoI don't understand why more people don't use bcfg2. Its awesome for this purpose (and I think better than puppet or chef.)
- nodata 16y agoThen educate people! Don't just say it's better, say why!
- e1ven 16y agoI did a midrange deployment with bcfg2 (~250 machines), and what I found is that it was slow to use. Firing off a bcfg2 push would take almost 20 minutes, which was pretty unusable; The big problem was that it didn't handle large numbers of connections simultaneously well, so I ended up having to stagger them. CFengine was able to do the same push in < 30 seconds. Win. I'll be looking at Chef again in the near future. It's got a LOT of nice features; Hopefully we can make it scale out quickly.
- DanielBMarkham 16y agoAmazon continues to amaze me with what they are setting up. I've had my problems with some of their policies, but overall they are really doing a bang-up job. They are doing what any good business does: they are making it really hard to pick any other alternative. I really like the idea of moving VMs in and out of the cloud. Can't emphasize enough how neat that is. If other vendors start implementing this, we could have true infrastructure portability. Very cool.
- phuff 16y agoOne problem I've had at every place employment I've worked at in the last few years is getting a VM which matches production to use as a sandbox. With this kind of thing it would make that a snap. "What's the difference between this and production?" "Nothing. It's the same image."
- DanielBMarkham 16y agoYep Not only that, but many enterprise systems are not just a server, or even a couple of servers, but a cluster of servers of various configurations. With good bandwidth, you could pull the entire bunch down locally to use in dev and testing. That's unheard of as far as I know (although it has been the holy grail for some time) Businesses that start and grow in an environment like this are going to have significant advantages over older businesses.
- nopal 16y agoVMWare offers a tool that solves this problem -- Lab Manager (http://www.vmware.com/products/labmanager/ http://www.vmware.com/products/labmanager/). It even supports setting up environments that contain isolated clones of multiple servers (see other child comment). From what I understand it's going to be replaced with a new product fairly soon, but I've heard great things about Lab Manger.
- howradical 16y agoCheck out DevStructure blueprints (http://devstructure.com http://devstructure.com).
- krobertson 16y agoThey announce it when only support Windows Server 2008 SP2? Seems rather underwhelming when that is all you can import. Building an AMI or cooking with chef/knife is easy enough, but I know a lot of people who'd like that kind of simplicity. Just too bad it is only one OS.
- nopal 16y agoIt's just a starting point. And I bet they focused on Windows because there aren't as many great provisioning tools as there are for Linux.
- gamma_raj 16y agoBeautiful