GCP: add aarch64 image

[dustymabe]

GCP has support for 64 bit ARM (aarch64) instances. We should try to produce and test an aarch64 image for Google Cloud.

[dustymabe]

Things we'd need to do here:

• we'd need to enable testing for these images
• we have image families in GCP. We'd need to think about the implications of this there.

[dustymabe]

• we have image families in GCP. We'd need to think about the implications of this there.

According to @zmarano we have to create a new image family for the new architecture images. Our current production image families are:

• fedora-coreos-stable
• fedora-coreos-testing
• fedora-coreos-next

He suggested we add:

• fedora-coreos-stable-arm64...

I have two questions here:

1. Should we reorganize our existing image families to mention x86_64?
2. Should we use the convention that GCP other image families already have of using arm64 rather than aarch64 in the image family name?

[zmarano]

1. we have been avoiding this because existing users would break if they are depending on the family name in their automation. Therefore, we believe it is better to leave the existing family names as they are and just use the -arm64 variant for the arm architecture.

2. We would prefer it just because it makes everything the same. Unfortunately, the architecture string is different in different distros (there are at least 3 variations). And we picked one to use everywhere so as not to confuse the UX.

[Prashanth684]

According to @zmarano we have to create a new image family for the new architecture images

Is it a problem if we have arm64 images as part of the same families? what prevents us from doing that?

[zmarano]

Yes that is a problem. Families are references to the latest, non-deprecated, active image in given family. There can't be two different images references against the same family.

[dustymabe]

We discussed this in the community meeting today.

13:17:50  dustymabe | #agreed we will leave the existing image families in place (for
                    | x86_64) and create new `-arm64` image families for the aarch64
                    | images.

[dustymabe]

OK I think the remaining work here is:

• create new image families for ARM in GCP
  • EDIT: no explicit action needed here. When you create an image with the new image family name it will just show up.
• update mantle to be able to upload ARM images (COSA)
• update fedora-coreos-pipeline pipecfg to create GCP ARM images
  • add to artifact list
  • make image family in pipecfg arch dependent:
    • family:
      • x86_64: "fedora-coreos-${STREAM}"
      • aarch64: "fedora-coreos-${STREAM}-arm64
• update fedora-coreos-pipeline to kick off GCP ARM tests
• update release checklist to check results of GCP ARM tests
• make sure the GCP ARM image shows up on the website

[dustymabe]

The following PRs should cover the bulk of the work here:

• mantle: support aarch64 architecture for GCP coreos-assembler#3520
• add support for aarch64 gcp fedora-coreos-pipeline#879

[dustymabe]

This one should cover the release checklist:

• release-checklist: check aarch64 GCP runs repo-templates#148

[dustymabe]

This is now complete. The only remaining item is to make sure it shows up on the website when the next round of releases goes out.

[dustymabe]

The fix for this went into next stream release 38.20230625.1.0. Please try out the new release and report issues.

[dustymabe]

The fix for this went into testing stream release 38.20230625.2.0. Please try out the new release and report issues.

[dustymabe]

The fix for this went into stable stream release 38.20230609.3.0.