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Example Image Permissions Articles
When publishing an image to be used by another user, customer or an entire billing entity, the image owner may wish to restrict some of the permissions the image user has, for security, support or other reasons. For more information, see the article on Managing an Image.
The permissions are used on the servers or disks created from an image (rather than on the image itself) as a user has no specific rights to the image.

Case 1: ISV with a virtual appliance

An ISV wishes to use a Brinkster Cloud Services platform as a route to market for their software. They provide a virtual appliance with full support, and without customer access, except perhaps via a web-based configuration page. They thus want to ensure:

  • That customers don't tamper with and change things they shouldn't.
  • That customers can't breach any protection that might be in place for their IPR.
  • That the machine can't be cloned/manipulated to avoid paying multiple license fees.
  • That the customer can still add additional disk space and take snapshot backups if required.

In this case the ISV would set the following capabilities:

  • Can Snapshot: End customers are able to take snapshots of a disk.
  • Can Have Additional Disks: Allows them to add additional disks to a server.
  • Can Start: Allows them to start the server.
  • Can Create Server: Allows them to create a server from the image.

Case 2: ISV with MAC address licensing system

If ISVs use individual server MAC (Network Card) addresses as validation for a license key, they would be less concerned about perhaps using http virtual machine being cloned into more servers, but still retain concerns about the image being manipulated. They also give customers access to a non-privileged SSH account for adding the key and charge based on the disk capacity supplied in the server. In this case the ISV would allow the following capabilities:

  • Can Clone: End users are able to create clone disks from the existing one.
  • Can Snapshot: They are able to take snapshots of a disk.
  • Can Console: Allows them to start a console to the server.
  • Can Start: Allows them to start the server.
  • Can Create Server: Allows them to create a server from the image.

Case 3: GPL based Image

If an Image Provider was to provide a GPL based image that they were happy for other people to redistribute, they would leave all capabilities enabled. The Image Provider might then earn a revenue stream from support.