.. _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.