[04:39] <flaccid> smoser: i took your advice; now i am doing ec2-bundle-image; just about to test one
[04:39] <flaccid> erichammond, smoser : i noticed that bundling an image and uploading takes longer, i guess this is because its a full uncompressed img, in this case 10GB, right?
[05:25] <erichammond> flaccid: bundling and uploading an image takes longer than what?
[05:25] <flaccid> just saying that ec2-bundle-image takes longer than ec2-bundle-vol
[05:26] <flaccid> because the image has a physical size
[05:26] <flaccid> thus why lots of parts compared to the compressed userland on bundle vol
[05:27] <erichammond> flaccid: Ah.  I use bundle-vol.  It avoids potential security issues with deleted files and lets you start up faster.
[05:27] <flaccid> yeah, i found the opposite with the security files thing
[05:27] <erichammond> flaccid: However, I think S3 based AMIs are obsolescent and should only be used for rare cases.  EBS boot should be the default for most folks.
[05:28] <flaccid> so you think ebs boot even if you are not going to bundle again i.e. true appliance?
[05:28] <erichammond> flaccid: With EBS boot you snapshot instead of bundling.  You can register the snapshot as a new AMI if you want.
[05:29] <flaccid> yeah
[05:29] <flaccid> i'm talking about re-snaphotting in this case for persistence
[05:29] <flaccid> i think you can ebs vol boot as well
[05:36] <flaccid> 625seconds to bundle from an image
[05:36] <flaccid> that is considerably more
[05:36] <flaccid> 36 parts
[05:37] <flaccid> upload 72 seconds
[06:17] <flaccid> good rule of thumb to upload image parts and manifest into a dedicated 'sub-bucket' ?
[06:20] <flaccid> the bucket can get large with lots of images
[06:20] <flaccid> e.g. i just did rightscale-rightimages/rightimage_debian_squeeze_i386_server_v5.4.6_20100628.1.manifest.xml
[06:20] <flaccid> rightscale-rightimages will get very big with child objects
[06:31] <flaccid> looks like it takes about an extra 3mins for startup with a bundled image
[07:31] <flaccid> yeah hmm 6 mins to go from pending to booting
[07:31] <flaccid> i guess its unpacking a 10GB
[08:46] <erichammond> flaccid: There's a fairly low limit on buckets, so I put bundles into relatively few buckets.  Of course, I recommending using EBS boot instead and with EBS boot, you don't have to worry about buckets.
[08:47] <flaccid> how does ebs boot work - do you boot directly from an ebs volume that is restored from an ebs snapshot ?
[08:48] <erichammond> flaccid: Yes. http://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2009/12/03/amazon-ec2-instances-now-can-boot-from-amazon-ebs/
[08:48] <flaccid> yeah so you just pay a bit more for the ebs usage right?
[08:49] <erichammond> ye
[08:49] <erichammond> s
[08:49] <flaccid> so you make persistent by taking an ebs snapshot and restoring/booting from that?
[08:50] <erichammond> The root EBS volume is persistent itself.  You can snapshot to improve reliability.
[08:50] <erichammond> You can also register a snapshot as an AMI to use as the base for new instances.
[08:50] <flaccid> yeah, the equiv of a rebundle to s3 right?
[08:50] <erichammond> Depends on your use, but generally.
[08:51] <flaccid> i assume the snapshot size is irrelevant to the size of your volume
[08:51] <flaccid> which means the snapshot is only the size of the data in the fs
[08:52] <erichammond> Just like normal EBS volume snapshots.  Depends on the data onthe disk and the blocks modified since the last snapshot.
[08:52] <flaccid> yep the delta
[08:52] <flaccid> i'm just thinking about the process when using a bootstrapped ami mounted to loopback..
[08:53] <erichammond> You create the original AMI by copying the file system over to an EBS volume and creating a snapshot.
[08:53] <flaccid> yep i'm just thinking of avoiding the copying
[08:54] <flaccid> don't think its possible
[08:54] <flaccid> rsync -avz
[08:54] <erichammond> If you don't copy, then you have more modified blocks on the EBS volume including any deleted files.
[08:55] <erichammond> It is possible, but I recommend the rsync.  No need to use -z
[08:55] <flaccid> ok thanks
[08:55] <flaccid> basically everything is strapped to a .img
[08:55] <flaccid> then s3 or ebs are options after that..
[08:56] <erichammond> You don't need to use loopback.  You can debootstrap to a subdirectory
[08:56] <erichammond> assuming you're still building Debian.
[08:57] <flaccid> yeah but my build process uses an image so you can also archive that
[08:57] <flaccid> and optionally remount and check prior to bundling/regstration
[08:58] <erichammond> ok
[08:59] <flaccid> its handy for the possibilities of generic images between ec2 and eucalyptus
[09:12] <erichammond> flaccid: Yep, that's what Canonical is doing.  I start my EBS boot AMIs by downloading their pre-built images.
[09:13] <flaccid> sweet as