Cloud Deployment Debate: Bake Or Boostrap?

Grazed from InformationWeek. Author: Joe Masters Emison.

Several months ago, I said that Netflix’s push to drive the adoption of its open-source cloud-management toolkit, NetflixOSS, had the potential to "ruin cloud computing." Part of my argument revolved around the Netflix Aminator tool, which facilities the creation of Amazon Machine Images (AMIs). While Aminator may be a good choice for Netflix, I argued that it encourages exactly the wrong habits for the majority of companies trying to deploy applications in the cloud.

After many long discussions about that initial article, I believe there is still significant confusion about how one should best use AMIs (or the equivalent from other public cloud providers), and so I am dedicating this column to what I call "the baking debate."…

Let’s start with some background: Anyone who wants to use a public infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) provider like Amazon Web Services (AWS) needs to use machine images. These machine images are what they sound like — an image of a virtual server that you can launch, and once it is active (within minutes), it’s your server to use as you wish. The machine image has, at a minimum, an operating system on it, but it can have as much other stuff as you want to cram in. Most IaaS providers make it easy to launch one machine image, make changes to the image (like installing and configuring software), and then "save" the resulting machine as a new image. The "baking debate" revolves around how you should use machine images. Essentially, wrong choices will bite you down the road…

Read more from the source @ http://www.informationweek.com/cloud-computing/infrastructure/cloud-deployment-debate-bake-or-boostrap/240163320