"What would you say ya *do* here?"

[Greg DeKoenigsberg]

As has been pointed out, "cloud" is a very large topic.  Which means that, 
IMO, there are two directions we can go on this list that are not mutually 
exclusive: long-winded, bloviating discussions about what we *could* do, 
and detailed plans for what we *will* do.

Let's focus on the second for now, since the first is going to happen 
anyways.

There are many potential cloud goals that we could be tackling, but I 
believe that a lot of people would agree with this proposed initial goal:

LET'S CREATE FEDORA EC2 IMAGES THAT DON'T SUCK.

:)

Right now we face a dilemma:

   * The latest Fedora kernel available on Amazon EC2 is Fedora 8;
   * Various people are creating "Fedora images" based on that AKI;
   * Confusion results, e.g.: 
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/448794/how-does-an-amazon-ec2-instance...
   * Which (a) doesn't work and (b) gives Fedora a bad name in the process.

We have an opportunity to fix this.  Justin Forbes has been working with 
some folks at Amazon to make this better, and it looks like we'll have an 
"official" account that will allow us to do something clever, like put a 
Gold Star next to "official" Fedora EC2 images.

Once we actually get them up and running, of course.  Which, painted in 
broad strokes, maybe looks something like this:

1. Getting a basic image uploaded and working for anybody (Justin is on 
this, but maybe could use some help?);

2. Getting a basic image uploaded and working for everybody (which means 
coordinating a testing account for Fedora people to use free-of-charge, 
which we have funding for, and then finding actual people to test);

3. Getting that basic image created as part of the Fedora release process 
(which was discussed at FUDCon, but I don't know if any of those 
conversations continued);

4. Providing proper tools for people to create their own images, since 
creation of a custom "spin" is basically an essential activity in the 
cloud.

It may be that some of this activity is going on already, and that's a 
large part of what this SIG is about: to find those people and get them 
talking in one place, away from the clutter of fedora-devel and other 
lists.  So if you're working on tools that will help with this goal, by 
all means, speak up.

And now, a couple of questions.

* For Justin.  How's your current image looking?  Does it work well enough 
for other folks to try it out?  If not, what's the issue, and can anyone 
help?

* For everyone.  Have you played with EC2 yet?  If not, do you have a 
side project that could benefit from its use, that furthers the goals of 
Fedora / free software / etc., and are willing to test our images?  If so, 
let us know -- we've got an account for this purpose, and can send you the 
info needed to get started.  Even if we don't have the latest Fedora up 
yet, there are plenty of images that you can play with to get a sense of 
how EC2 works.

* For everyone.  Would an IRC meeting to talk through some of this stuff 
be useful -- sort of a kickoff where everyone takes an hour out of their 
life to think about all this -- or should we stick to the mailing list for 
now?

--g

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