Reliability of Fedora infrastructure to download cloud images

[Kashyap Chamarthy]

[I'm not subscribed to this list, please keep me in CC.]

Heya,

A little while ago, we (Matthew Miller, myself, Attila Fazekas (upstream
OpenStack developer) had an IRC discussion (on #openstack-qa, Freenode)
with OpenStack upstream CI infrastructure folks about their concerns for
continuing to have Fedora as a default to run as CI voting guest (Nova
instance). They (mostly Sean Dague - a major upstream OpenStack
contributor who voiced these) outlined a few issues:

  1. It's not possible to download from the fedora infrastructure
     reliably - 10% failure rate from their cloud providers (HP and
     RAX).
      - About this point, when mattdm inquired - "is the failure in
        hitting the fedora mirrors or fedora core infrastructure?",
        their response - "I don't fully know, I think going through the
        url we are using we get bounced to mirrors".

  2. There are possibly issues with the normal upstream fedora image
     that could be fixed with custom respin.
      - NOTE: I'm doubtful of this idea, as existing Fedora cloud images
        itself are not really extensively tested. I'd think focusing on
        _official_ cloud images and having a solid set of tests so that
        it can be consumed by cloud projects (OpenStack, etc).

      - Having a custom respin means that we're off the main path for
        testing of the image -- which again needs _some_ level of
        assurance that it can be used in a higher-level cloud project's
        CI infr- which again needs _some_ level of assurance that it can
        be used in a higher-level cloud project's CI infra.

  3. Another important point OpenStack infra folks emphasized is - these
     images will get 4000 test runs a week on them 

Any suggestions to allay these are welcome.

--
/kashyap