Producing images for the IBM Cloud chimera

[lucab]

This is a followup to coreos/fedora-coreos-tracker#277 (comment), specifically concerning coreos-assembler.

I started some work on IBM Cloud VPC Generation 2, which resulted in #1118.
Afterward I moved onto IBM Cloud Classic and sadly discovered that it would need another separate image because:

• it takes a VHD (while Gen 2 needs a qcow2)
• it needs specific kargs (as it doesn't have DHCP, so no rd.neednet=1 ip=dhcp to dracut)

At this point I'm thus asking how to proceed. Two possible paths:

1. keep ibmcloud platform ID only for Gen2, later (maybe) allocate specific IDs for Classic / Gen1
2. keep ibmcloud as the single umbrella platform ID, produce multiple image "formats" akin to what we do for metal images

#1118 goes with the first option (platform: ibmcloud, format: qcow2), however the second option would instead require a slightly different arrangement since the beginning (platform: ibmcloud, format: gen2).

As a sidenote to option 1, it could be a good idea to make it more explicit and rename the platform ID to ibmcloud-gen2.

[jlebon]

So summing up, the two clouds have different mechanisms for (1) how user-data is fetched, (2) how network is set up, and (3) which disk format is accepted? Are there things that are the same between the two, yet not shared with other clouds? If not, this strongly suggests to me making them separate platform IDs entirely.

[ashcrow]

Are there things that are the same between the two, yet not shared with other clouds? If not, this strongly suggests to me making them separate platform IDs entirely.

I agree with ☝️. If there isn't much that unites the two platforms I'd suggest noting ibmcloud for the gen 2 and ibmcloud-classic or something like that for the classic version.

[dustymabe]

Dumb question.. Since gen2 already exists - could we just not support classic?

[ashcrow]

Dumb question.. Since gen2 already exists - could we just not support classic?

Not a dumb question. For FCOS I think that focusing on the latest and greatest makes a lot of sense. However, it's expected RHCOS will work on both.

[lucab]

Ack, looking at the thumbs-up it seems there is general consensus to proceed as follow:

• keep ibmcloud as the platform identifier for IBM Cloud VPC Generation 2
• explore IBM Cloud Classic under a specific identifier ibmcloud-classic
• purposely ignore IBM Cloud VPC Generation 1, as it is not relevant to either RHCOS nor FCOS

[ashcrow]

Agreed @lucab