Image Registry Service (plankton)

Introduction

Plankton is the synnefo Image Registry Service. It is implemented as a very thin layer on top of Pithos+; every Image on Plankton is a file on a Pithos+ backend, with special metadata. At the frontend, Plankton implements the OpenStack Glance API; at the backend it queries an existing Pithos+ backend. In the current implementation the service runs Plankton and Pithos+ on a single, unified backend: users may synchronize their Images, using the Pithos+ clients, then register them with Plankton, with zero data movement. Then spawn new VMs from those images with Cyclades.

Let’s see below:

The figure shows a sailor bundling his physical machine with the snf-image-creator tool, uploading the file to pithos+, registering the file as a new image with plankton and then spawning two new VMs with Cyclades from this image.

The Plankton API is implemented inside Cyclades, so please consult the Cyclades Documentation for more details.