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Image Rotation

What is it ?

Image rotation in our cloud is a mechanism that keeps all official images up-to-date with their upstream versions.

Why is it done?

The latest image versions have up-to-date security patches.

How does it work ?

Every 2 months, the mechanism checks all official images and compares them with their upstream version.

If any image is not up-to-date, it is “rotated”, i.e., its latest version takes its place under the same name.

The older image is renamed. Its name is in the format: {OFFICIAL_IMAGE_NAME}-{ROTATION_DATE}

Example

The official image is named:

centos-7-x86_64

Mechanism swapped this image and saved its latest version under the same name centos-7-x86_64. The older version was renamed to :

centos-7-x86_64-2021-12-15

where a suffix 2021-12-15 represents the date image was rotated.

Older images are later still available under new name or its original ID.

You can find image ID by using command:

openstack image show <IMAGE_NAME | IMAGE_ID>

or

you can find it in Horizon dashboard by clicking at specific image.

Older images are kept for another 2 months as public. After that their visibility is changed to community.

Community images are still available in OpenStack. You can list all community images via command:

openstack image list --community

They will not appear in your dashboard however. To use them you have to use CLI command:

openstack server create --image <IMAGE_NAME | IMAGE_ID> [ADDITIONAL_PARAMS] <SERVER_NAME>

After 1 year community images are deleted if they are not used anymore.

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