Image properties

When we talk about images in the Rackspace Cloud, what we are really referring to is an image record with which the image data file is associated.

• An image data file can be a virtual hard disk (VHD).

• An image record consists of a set of image properties (also known as image metadata) that describes the image.

Image properties have several functions:

• They are used by the image owner to catalog the image. For example, public images provided by Rackspace have the com.rackspace\_\_1\_\_release\_id property, which you can use to locate all available versions of a particular image. For images that you own, you can add your own cataloging properties so that you can efficiently search through your set of images.

• They are used by the Cloud Servers API to determine whether a request to boot a server from a particular combination of image and flavor makes sense. For example, if the min\_ram property of an image has a value of 512, then the specified flavor must provide at least 512 MB of RAM or the boot request is rejected.

• They are used by the Cloud Servers scheduler to locate a host for a server. For example, the hypervisor\_version\_requires property specifies what version of XenServer the image expects to find when it is booted.

• They are used by the hypervisor during the process of booting a server from an image. For example, the auto\_disk\_config property indicates whether the hypervisor should expand the disk partition and file system found on the image to fit the server’s system disk.

• They are used by Cloud Images in its handling of images. For example, if the visibility property indicates that an image is public, the image is included in each user’s image list.

A set of image properties is maintained by Cloud Images itself. Users (and in some cases, even system administrators) cannot modify these properties. Among these properties are:

• checksum: The MD5 sum of the image data file

• status: The current state of the image. An image must be in active status to be used to boot a server.

• owner: Indicates who owns the image

• id: A universally unique identifier (UUID) assigned to this image

See also

Image properties Data immutability On-demand images Importing and exporting images Scheduled images Creating custom images from servers Creating cloud servers from base images: Default base image configurations Base images life cycle Patching base images

Sharing images: Managing shared images Models of sharing images Planning to share or use shared images Preparing to share images Image-sharing roles Getting support for shared images

Understanding Cloud Images introduces key ideas. To learn how to put these ideas to work, start at Actions for Cloud Images.