Cloud Computing with Debian and its descendants

This page summaries on what to expect from Debian when it comes to compute clouds, in which virtual machines can be quickly provisioned via service calls, configured and manipulated through various manual or automated means, and terminated when no longer needed.

We support a number of different cloud-oriented use cases:

run as a guest OS on a number of different services
run the infrastructure that hosts a private cloud
run as a client, interacting with cloud services via APIs or other network services

Starting with bullseye, documentation on the image lifecycle and security support can be found here.

Debian cloud images in the cloud marketplaces

Cloud images have to deviate from the base Debian image due to nature of the environment in which they are running.
On pages listed below we're trying to explain differences between them:

Cloud images requirements

Teams/DPL/OfficialImages - list of requirements to call a image Official Debian Image

Building cloud images

The Cloud team uses FAI to generate images. The toolchain and configs are available at https://salsa.debian.org/cloud-team/debian-cloud-images

Unsupported

These clouds don't have Debian images yet, but users of these services are invited to work with the cloud team to add support:

IBM LinuxONE Community Cloud
Oracle cloud

Cloud software already available in Debian

OpenStack

How to contribute

Start by joining the Debian Cloud team and/or the Openstack maintainers mailing list

Note that, especially OpenStack, is BIG. We already have more than 50 binary packages of it in sid. So of course, we'd be more than happy to have help for its packaging/testing.

Reporting bugs

The Debian Cloud team uses the cloud.debian.org pseudo-package to track issues not bound to a specific package maintained in the team (for example, for the Amazon AWS images).

After reporting a bug against a Debian package, which has an impact on Debian images provided on or for clouds, please mark that the bug affects cloud.debian.org.

Bugs are divided in four categories, by usertagging with the address ?cloud.debian.org@packages.debian.org:

image (Machine Images)
infrastructure
documentation
package

Bugs related to the images distributed in public clouds (outdatedness, lack of availability in all zones, etc.) can be usertagged ( More names of public clouds can of course be added, please keep the list of control commands below up to date) with:

aws (for Amazon Web Services)
azure (for Microsoft Azure)
gce (for Google Compute Engine)
openstack (for Openstack)

The user categories were set up with the following control emails:

FAQ

What is the default user name on the Debian cloud images?

A. The default user name differs based on the cloud environment. Please see https://wiki.debian.org/Cloud/SystemsComparison for more information. Authentication is via the ssh key installed by cloud-init. There is no password. These accounts may become root by running (no password required):

sudo -i

What is the difference between the generic and genericcloud images?

A. The difference is in the pre-installed kernel; the images are otherwise identical. The generic image uses Debian's standard Linux kernel packages, while the genericcloud image uses the cloud kernel build. The cloud kernel disables a large number of device drivers and primarily targets the Amazon EC2 and Microsoft Azure VM device models. It may be usable in other environments, but for maximum compatibility we recommend using the generic images.

Why isn't the qemu-guest-agent package pre-installed in the cloud images?

A. qemu-guest-agent assumes a level of integration between the VM and the underlying infrastructure that is not appropriate for a general purpose image. Our published images need to be suitable for use in environments where there's a trust boundary between the VM and the underlying host.

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