cloud-init: Summit 2018
***********************

.. note::

   This article was written by Joshua Powers and `originally published`_ on 27
   August 2018. It is shared here `under license`_ with no changes.

.. image:: https://assets.ubuntu.com/v1/04d0b05b-2018_waterfront.jpg
   :alt: Seattle waterfront
   :align: center

Last week the cloud-init development team from Canonical ran our second annual
two-day summit. Attendees included cloud developers from Amazon, Microsoft,
Google, VMWare, and Oracle, as well as the maintainer of cloud-init from Amazon
Linux, SUSE, and Ubuntu.

The purpose of this two-day event is to meet with contributors, demo recent
developments, present future plans, resolve outstanding issues, and collect
additional feedback on the past year.

Like last year, the even was held in Seattle, Washington. A special thanks goes
to Microsoft for providing breakfast and lunch while hosting us and to the
Amazon Linux and AWS teams for buying everyone dinner!

.. image:: https://assets.ubuntu.com/v1/78642b7c-2018_roadmap.jpg
   :alt: Roadmap talk
   :align: center

Talks, Demos, and Discussions
=============================

The cloud-init development team came with a number of prepared demos and talks
that they gave as a part of the summit:

* **Recent Features and Retrospective**: Ryan started the summit off with an
  overview of features landed in the past year as we all metrics since the
  start of faster releases with date-based versioning.
* **Community Checkpoint & Feedback**: Scott hosted a session where he explored
  the various avenues contributors have and received input and ideas for even
  better collaboration.
* **Roadmap**: Ryan presented the roadmap for upcoming releases and requested
  feedback from those in attendance.
* **Ending Python 2.6 Support**: Scott announced the end of Python 2.6 support
  and there was a discussion on ending Python 2.7 support as well. An
  announcement to the mailing list is coming soon.
* **Instance-data.json support and cloud-init cli**: Chad demoed a standard way
  of querying instance-data keys to enable scripting, templating, and access
  across all clouds.
* **Multipass**: Alberto from the Canonical Multipass team joined us to demo
  the `Multipass`_ project. Multipass is the fastest way to get a virtual
  machine launched with the latest Ubuntu images.
* **Integration Testing and CI**: Josh gave an update on the new CI processes,
  auto-landing merge requests, and demoed the integration tests. He went
  through what it takes to add additional clouds and his wish-list for
  additional testing.
* **Pre-Network Detection for Clouds**: Chad ran a discussion on collecting
  pre-networking detection for clouds in order to speed up instance
  initialization and decrease boot time.

Breakout Sessions
=================

In addition to the prepared demos and discussions, the summit had numerous
sessions that were requested by the attendees as additional topics for
discussion.

SUSE led at discussion around the sysconfig renderer and network rework, while
the Amazon Linux team discussed some of their patches. Both distros are working
to minimize the number of patches required.

During the summit, we took time to have merge review and bug squashing time.
During this time, attendees came with outstanding bugs to discuss possible
fixes as well as go through outstanding merge requests and get live reviews.

.. image:: https://assets.ubuntu.com/v1/7d203365-2018_talk.jpg
   :alt: Another talk
   :align: center

Conclusions
===========

As always a huge thank you to the community for attending! The summit was a
great time to see many contributors face-to-face as well as collect feedback
for cloud-init development.

`Notes of both days`_ can be found on the cloud-init mailing list. There you
will find additional details about what I have described above and much more.

Finally, if you are interested in following or getting involved in cloud-init
development check out #cloud-init on Freenode or subscribe to the
`cloud-init mailing list`_.

.. LINKS:
.. _originally published: https://powersj.io/posts/cloud-init-summit18/
.. _under license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
.. _Multipass: https://github.com/canonical/multipass
.. _Notes of both days: https://lists.launchpad.net/cloud-init/msg00169.html
.. _cloud-init mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~cloud-init
