save AMI??

Hello;

First thanks the CloudFoundry team for their work.

I want to ask about a scenario:

I started an instance by cloud foundry.
Then I changed some settings, added cron jobs, installed webmin and other applications etc.
Is there any way to persist these changes?
Like save the AMI before terminating it,
and at the next start, start the cloud foundry based on saved AMI?

In fact I am not hopeful about this question, as I have seen questions like "Will you support Postgre SQL?" If saving AMI was possible, then installing Postgre Sql would not be problem.

Waiting for your reply, as I can not continue without freedom to select some applications and change some configuration details.

Thanks in advance.
Enes Akar

Enes,

We don't support launching AMIs other than our own.
In theory we could let you specify a script to run when the instance is launched to perform some customization - would that be useful?

Chris

Yes, scripts will be a solution. Rightscale has similar solution for this, they call their configuration scripts as "RightScript".

Preconfigured script templates will be useful. For example: script template examples for postgresql users, script template example for the one who wants to install qmail etc.

Customization approach may threaten the simplicity of cloud foundry, so gain some lose some. You may continue with restrictions and target the users who are only interested if their war is deployed. Users who wants to take more control (like me) may go to alternatives, that will be your business decision. Also I think that, app engine is a better alternative for ones who are only interested deploying and running their war. So if one chooses AWS as cloud platform, probably he wants more control. So my opinion is cloud foundry should serve more customization options.

Thanks