A virtual machine image, referred to in this document simply as an image, is a single file that contains a virtual disk that has a bootable operating system installed on it. Images are used to create virtual machine instances within the cloud. Depending on your role, you may have permission to upload and manage virtual machine images. Operators might restrict the upload and management of images to cloud administrators and/or operators only. If you have the appropriate privileges, you can use the dashboard to upload and manage images in the admin project.

Upload an image

Get Images

By connecting to the website Get Images, it is possible to download locally the images of some of the best known operating systems (Ubuntu, Debian, CentOS, and so on). Here we use the CirrOs operating system, that is a minimal Linux distribution and was designed for use as a test image on clouds, image in the qcow2 format.

Follow this procedure to upload an image to a project:

  1. Log in to the dashboard.
  2. Select the appropriate project from the drop down menu at the top left.
  3. On the Project tab, open the Compute tab and click Images category.
  4. Click Create Image. The Create An Image dialog box appears (fig. below).
  5. Enter the values in the table below.
  6. Click Create Image.

Image Name

Enter a name for the image.

Image Description

Enter a brief description of the image.

Image Source

Choose the image source from the dropdown list. Your choices are Image Location and Image File.

Image File or Image Location

Based on your selection for Image Source, you either enter the location URL of the image in the Image Location field, or browse for the image file on your file system and add it.

Format

Select the image format (for example, QCOW2) for the image.

Architecture

Specify the architecture. For example, i386 for a 32-bit architecture or x86_64 for a 64-bit architecture.

Minimum Disk (GB)

Leave this field empty.

Minimum RAM (MB)

Leave this field empty.

Copy Data

Specify this option to copy image data to the Image service.

Visibility

The access permission for the image. Public or Private.

Note: In Cloud@CNAF this option is not visible, and therefore editable, for security reasons. This is to avoid spreading uncertified images among users. The images created have a visibility set to Private by default, allowing their creation only within the project assigned to the user.

Protected

Select this check box to ensure that only users with permissions can delete the image (Yes or No).

Image Metadata

Specify this option to add resource metadata. The glance Metadata Catalog provides a list of metadata image definitions.

Note: Not all cloud providers enable this feature.


Create Image

Once Created, the image is queued to be uploaded. It might take some time before the status changes from Queued to Active.

Update an image

Follow this procedure to update an existing image:

  1. Log in to the dashboard.
  2. Select the appropriate project from the drop down menu at the top left.
  3. Select the image that you want to edit.
  4. In the Actions column (last column), click the menu button and then select Edit Image from the list.
  5. In the Edit Image dialog box, you can perform various actions. For example:
    • Change the name of the image.
    • Change the description of the image.
    • Change the format of the image.
    • Change the minimum disk of the image.
    • Change the minimum RAM of the image.
    • Select the Public/Private button to make the image public/private (action not allowed for the reasons presented in the previous paragraph).
    • Change the metadata of the image.
  6. Click Edit Image.

Edit Image

Delete an image

Deletion of images is permanent and cannot be reversed. Only users with the appropriate permissions can delete images.

  1. Log in to the dashboard.
  2. Select the appropriate project from the drop down menu at the top left.
  3. On the Project tab, open the Compute tab and click Images category.
  4. Select the images that you want to delete.
  5. Click Delete Images.
  6. In the Confirm Delete Images dialog box, click Delete Images to confirm the deletion.
  • No labels