[RFE] Publish Flatcar Linux Arm64 images to Azure

[dghubble]

Current situation

Flatcar Linux has alluded to arm64 images being available on Azure in #716 and https://twitter.com/flatcar/status/1580307641011576833

The Flatcar Linux Azure docs don't mention arm64 offerings. Looking around, Kinvolk does have a flatcar-container-linux-corevm offering that is marked for Arm64:

az vm image list --all -p kinvolk --sku stable --architecture Arm64
[
  {
    "architecture": "Arm64",
    "offer": "flatcar-container-linux-corevm",
    "publisher": "kinvolk",
    "sku": "stable",
    "urn": "kinvolk:flatcar-container-linux-corevm:stable:3227.2.2",
    "version": "3227.2.2"
  }
]

However, its apparently not usable:

The Offer: 'flatcar-container-linux-corevm' cannot be purchased by subscription: 'REDACTED' as it is not to be sold in market: 'US'

I suppose what you folks mean by saying its supported is that the images are released but I need to go through the manual upload / publish process myself?

Impact

What's the deal here? Do you publish images for Azure Arm64? What are the recommended offerings and channels? Docs?

Ideal future situation

Write some docs on where we can get your images.

[ahrkrak]

Please try: https://azuremarketplace.microsoft.com/de-de/marketplace/apps/kinvolk.flatcar-container-linux-corevm?tab=Overview

And let us know if this solves the issue.

[dghubble]

Can you show in the az CLI some of the Arm64 images that should be used? Which offer, sku, or urn? The marketplace marketing page doesn't seem to contain that info or link to it.

[jepio]

Hi @dghubble,
You're right, docs are missing, I apologize for that and we'll add them.

We do publish the images, and you should not need to upload/publish yourself. I think the likely source of your error is that you are still supplying plan information, though I don't really know why that wouldn't work 🤷. We have finally found a way to reduce the burden on users and remove the need for separate plan info. We'll be looking at unifying this with amd64 image publishing which still use the old marketplace name.

To provision an arm64 instances the following steps are enough for me:

g=g$RANDOM
az group create -g $g -l eastus
az vm create -g $g -n vm01 --image kinvolk:flatcar-container-linux-corevm:beta:latest --size Standard_D2pls_v5

[dghubble]

Ok, I think I see the situation. So flatcar-container-linux-corevm is the intended Arm64 offering name.

• For Arm64, its important to not specify a plan otherwise you'll get the is not to be sold in market: 'US' error.
• For x86, I must specify the plan and terms otherwise we get the a Marketplace image requires Plan information in the request error. And maybe in future you plan to reverse that.

It'd be great to see this stuff mentioned in official docs (at least that flatcar-container-linux-corevm is not just some errant debugging image). I don't think anyone would piece this together and have trust in it just on their own.

[jepio]

@dghubble better late than never: I've added a section to the docs documenting these offers: https://www.flatcar.org/docs/latest/installing/cloud/azure/#arm64