Synnefo

.. _plankton:

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:

.. image:: images/synnefo-clonepath.png

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 :ref:`Plankton API <plankton-api-guide>` is implemented inside Cyclades, so please consult the

:ref:`Cyclades Documentation <cyclades>` for more details.