Cloud image process

Background

Current state of developing and maintaining GitLab images on the various cloud services is very distributed and not defined. This results in a slow pace of progress to creating images, lack of clear ownership regarding the development and maintenance of the images, lack of proper documentations on the images and several other challenges. I've discussed the topic to learn from how we worked on our AWS and Azure images to create a process that includes the lessons learned from those efforts.

Initial Action Items for Process Setup:

• Create GitLab Images vault in 1Password, invite the omnibus, partner marketing teams
• Store existing credentials for AWS and Azure
• Omnibus team to review existing images on AWS and Azure - evaluate if update is required
• Create email account used for this purpose - cloud.images@gitlab.com? subscribe omnibus, marketing and strategic partnerships to this email. Store in vault.
• Store marketing assets in shared folder:
  • short description of our service image
  • long description of our service image
  • Logos:
    • small square, 40 px
    • medium square, 90 px
    • large square, 115 px

Azure Image - Problems & Lessons Learned:

• First step of creating image is creating account: company information, logo, default settings of the VM on the cloud service
• Need to decide on pricing structure (byol model) - community and enterprise
• Store account details for each cloud provider in a shared location (AWS aren't stored anywhere shared)
• Push to staging, wait for input from cloud service - takes time to hear back
• Chase cloud support (option to escalate) - support is slow on the partner side
• Write messaging of the image on the cloud service - someone needs to own this task

I would love to get your feedback @sytses @ernstvn @JobV @marin @AshleyS to improve on this process. Remember that this is just the first version and one we will continually improve.

cc @amara for partner marketing

@eliran.mesika did Ernst and Job have no other notes than this?

@sytses all their notes have been incorporated into the process, I've added the notes Ernst had from a more complex process for the Azure image in the MR description here.

Is this the right place for this documentation? At minimum, we should link to it from the handbook, no? Do we point out anywhere on our site or in our handbook that we have these images in these stores? Would be good for people to be aware, e.g. by virtue of reading the handbook or something about how / where GitLab is available.

@eliran.mesika some more detailed notes on what was required specifically for the Azure market place are found in the relevant issue https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/marketing/issues/148 as well as the URL's linked to from that issue.

@ernstvn I've added setting up the marketing assets as part of the initial setup as that was missing and will be needed for each image we work on. Other important lessons learned was sharing access to the account we create on the cloud service with other team members, but that is already addressed with the shared credential that will be stored on 1password. I will add a clarification to create a mission specific email for this that will be a mailing list to the involved teams.

Regarding the right place for this - I think it's the most relevant place. I agree we should mention it elsewhere more general - do you think it'll fit into the features page?

Added 1 commit:

• 364efa4d - Update Cloud_Image_Process added dedicated email.md

@eliran.mesika I'm not a fan of dispersed info across repo's. I hope/expect we'll use swiftype to search our own handbook soon, and I think it makes sense to continue to structure that handbook in a way that these things can be found there.

I would argue in favor of /handbook/cloud-images/, place this info there, and link to it from the handbook/marketing and handbook/infrastructure pages.

to move this useful info in the handbook :)

mentioned in merge request gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com!2661 (merged)

Status changed to closed

Final changes reflected here: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com/merge_requests/2661

mentioned in commit gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com@e369cae5