Why WOW level machine images don’t work
The standard method of operation in the virtualization world is to work with machine images
Final Fantasy Gil. This translates to: launch a server with an image that is “close” to what you want, then log in and install the software you need plus make any comfit changes, then create an image from that server for WOW level. Later on, when you need an instance of that server, you launch the image and hopefully it comes up ready to go. While this process may sound simple, it’s actually anything but that and takes quite some time. I went through the bundling treadmill back in 2006 and concluded this wasn’t productive. The reasons are simple: Images are too monolithic
RuneScape Gold. Everything on a server is bundled up in one image file which makes it difficult to manage a collection of images. Change the version of one software package you commonly use and you has to recreate all images that happen to use that package. This quickly gets out of hand. Images are opaque. From the outside it’s hard to tell what’s in an image. Even if you fire it up it’s not convenient to poke around to figure out what’s installed and how it’s configured. Try determining the difference between two WOW level images: not a pleasant task. Images are too big. They are unwieldy to work with. Take two images of different versions of your app server
Aion Kinah. More than 90% of the bits are typically identical, (often more than 99%). But finding the interesting ones that differ is like finding a needle in a haystack. This is ridiculous and contributes to making images hard to work with
Aion Power Leveling. Images are too static. You can’t fully configure each server. When you launch the 10th app server it needs to know its number 10 and not 9. When you launch a test app server it needs to know it’s in a test deployment (e.g., don’t send ***** emails to the ops team), yet you want the same image to be used in test as in production, otherwise, what are you really testing? So you need some dynamic configuration mechanism to “personalize” each server at boot time.By far the worst tree for me from the classes I know is the poor rest druid, the tree is pretty terrible and the class is on its knees. The tree is packed full of dull 'must have' spell boosters so the utility choices are all totally ruled out, there are no exciting interactions or mechanics and to top it all the mastery is counter intuitive and feels like a nerve (would you really choose a HOT for someone on less than 20% health? You will just get overwritten by a shaman anyway) Thank goodness I have an 80 priest to play!The bottom line is that my WOW level experience with images has been very frustrating. I know that tools exist to help manage them, but I’m not convinced this is a productive avenue. This why late in 2006 I set out to build what we now call Server Templates ?C and I can’t imagine going back
Metin2 Yang.
