#Image Factory#
Image Factory enables appliance creation and deployment to multiple virtualization and Cloud providers.
##Features##
- Build guest images for a growing list of operating system and cloud combinations.
- Current guest OS support: Fedora 7-16, RHEL 5.x and 6.x
- Current cloud support: Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization, VMware vSphere, Amazon EC2, Rackspace
- Image Factory supports "build and upload" or snapshotting of existing images.
- RESTful API makes integrating Image Factory into existing workflows simple.
If you are wanting to use Imagefactory in a dev environment then you can run from source. Run the 'imagefactory_dev_setup.sh' script found in the scripts directory. This will setup a dev environment which allows you to run from source. Once this is complete run ./imagefactoryd --foreground to start the server.
N.B. You can edit the imagefactory.conf file to set the default runtime options. See: imagefactoryd --help for a list of available options.
##Using Image Factory## Building an image begins with a template describing what to build. See an example of such a template below. See the schema documentation for TDL for more detail on creating a template. Note that a template is not tied to a specific cloud.
<template>
<name>f12jeos</name>
<os>
<name>Fedora</name>
<version>12</version>
<arch>x86_64</arch>
<install type='iso'>
<iso>http://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/fedora/linux/releases/12/Fedora/x86_64/os/</iso>
</install>
<rootpw>p@55word!</rootpw>
</os>
</template>
Ensure to change the element to your desired root password.
Next, use the imagefactory command and specify the template to use and for which clouds to build an image. The above template example was saved to a file name f12_64.tdl.
$ sudo imagefactory --template f12_64.tdl --target ec2
Once the image has been built, use the imagefactory command again, this time to push the image into the cloud.
$ sudo imagefactory --provider ec2-us-west-1 --credentials ec2_credentials.xml
That's it! You can now launch an instance of this image using either the cloud provider's management console or a cloud management tool such as Aeolus.
##Installing Image Factory## Installing Image Factory is quick and easy. See the imagefactory rpm installation instructions for more detail.