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57 changes: 57 additions & 0 deletions docs/README.md
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## Image Release Process

**⚠️ Note: Unless a semantic version build tag is set on the commit being triggered, TeamCity will generate a pre-release build of the images. This should not go out to Production**

1. `GitHub` Dockerfile Per Platform
2. `TeamCity` [Chain:ReleaseAll](https://build.octopushq.com/project/OctopusDeploy_WorkerTools?mode=builds#all-projects)
3. `Octopus (Dev)` Push to Artifactory
4. Wait For Worker Tools VM to push to Production Tenants (see below)
5. `Octopus (Prod)` Push to DockerHub

## 👷 Build
When a change is made to a file in this repository, TeamCity triggers the [full build chain](https://build.octopushq.com/buildConfiguration/OctopusDeploy_WorkerTools_ChainBuildTestAndRelease).
This results in a build of all the different distro's dockerfiles, as well as seperate architecture for non-windows os.

As part of this build process, individual images are pushed to the internal artifactory image repository.

## 📦 Artifact Storage
* **Artifactory**: (pre-prod) _docker.packages.octopushq.com/octopusdeploy/workertools_
* **DockerHub** (prod) [docker.io/octopusdeploy/worker-tools](https://hub.docker.com/r/octopusdeploy/worker-tools)

## 🐙 Deploy
The deployment process in [Worker Tools vNext](https://deploy.octopus.app/app#/Spaces-1163/projects/worker-tools-vnext/deployments?groupBy=Channel) performs some Image manipulation/pushing.
1. Pull each Image from Artifactory (where TC Build Pushes each)
2. Push each Image to target registry (results in a no-op for pre-prod which uses the same Artifactory registry it just pushed from
3. Create multi-arch `:<version>` taged image across all distros and push to target registry
4. Create multi-arch `:ubuntu-<version>` image and push to target registry (Windows does not support ARM so no need)
5.
**⚠️ Note: Until the Cloud infrastructure has been updated to use a Dynamic Worker VM that contains a cached version of the newly created image then it should not be pushed to production. See Below for more details.**

## Consumption in Octopus Deploy
When presented with the option to run an `Execution Container Image`, users can select this pre-built worker-tool image.

<img width="622" height="552" alt="image" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/b5f7a489-bfe6-4c1e-9f28-944681afe6b3" />

The list of images presented is dynamically retrieved from DockerHub and so, once the image has been pushed to `Production`, it potentially becomes the default image that customer will use when configuring a new step.

Unfortunately if the image is not yet cached on the Dynamic Worker VM Image, cloud customers may find that the image pull process takes an unreasonable amount of time. For this reason, it is reccomended that pushing to `Production` is only done once the new image has been sucessfully cached in the available Dynamic Worker VM.

## ☁️ Octopus Cloud Dynamic Worker Images
Not until the
[Cloud Platform deploy space](https://deploy.octopus.app/app#/Spaces-142/projects?searchValue=Dynamic+Worker+Images&page=1&pageSize=50&hideInactiveProjects=false) contains a project per VM.

Go to the Image deployment (e.g [x](https://build.octopushq.com/buildConfiguration/CloudPlatform_DynamicWorkers_DynamicWorkerVmImages_Ubuntu2204/23691299?showLog=23691299_2731_39.67.645.2501.2731&logView=flowAware)), find the latest build and look for the line entry describing the cached versions, looking for the header `Cache Docker Images`. At the bottom of this you will see log entry
```
azure-arm.ubuntu: Selecting the following images due to maximum image count of 3 :
azure-arm.ubuntu: - "6.6.5-ubuntu.22.04"
azure-arm.ubuntu: - "6.6.4-ubuntu.22.04"
azure-arm.ubuntu: - "6.6.3-ubuntu.22.04"
```

For each of the relevant distros, check the earliest build that had the new docker image cached.

Each Octopus Project has a `Cautious Promoter` step which runs the [Cautious Promoter](https://github.com/OctopusDeploy/CautiousPromoter) tool to determin when to push to each Production Tenant.

Once _all_ of these builds have been deployed to Production from the [Dynamic Worker Images Project](https://deploy.octopus.app/app#/Spaces-142/projects?includeProjectGroupId=ProjectGroups-1841&searchValue=Dynamic+Worker+Images&page=1&pageSize=50&hideInactiveProjects=false) Group, then the docker images can be released to production.

See [here](./execution-container-images.md) for further information about how execution container images work for Hosted Octopus.
52 changes: 52 additions & 0 deletions docs/execution-container-images.md
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# Execution Container Images in Hosted Octopus

[Execution Containers](https://octopus.com/docs/projects/steps/execution-containers-for-workers) run Docker images like [Worker Tools](https://github.com/OctopusDeploy/WorkerTools). These container images provide a common tool set to support the execution of steps, and are pre-cached on [Dynamic Worker VMs](https://octopus.com/docs/infrastructure/workers/dynamic-worker-pools). This documentation describes some architectural designs for these images to improve user experience.

## How Execution Container Images are Released

Previously, when a new version of Worker Tools was created, it was released directly to DockerHub. This became immediately available to users but Dynamic Workers didn't have this version cached yet. Whenever a new Worker Tools image is published, there's a 1-2 week roll-out period where the latest image isn't cached on Dynamic Workers. This caused slow deployments for users updating their Worker Tools due to workers downloading the image. Additionally pushing images directly to DockerHub was also against the principles of Sensible Defaults.

To improve customer experience, changes to the Worker Tools release process have been made. We use [JFrog Artifactory](https://packages.octopushq.com/ui/packages) as the staging environment for releasing new images. A new image is first pushed Artifactory. The Dynamic Workers VM Image pipeline will pull from Artifactory to cache recent images and produce a VM image. Once this VM image is released, new Dynamic Workers will be created with the latest version of Worker Tools cached. The process of selecting versions of images to cache is described in the [next section](#which-versions-to-cache).

Since it can take weeks for the Dynamic Workers with the new image cached to reach all production reefs, we created an [Execution Container Promoter](https://github.com/OctopusDeploy/ExecutionContainersPromoter). The Promoter is a Runbook that periodically checks whether an image version has reached all production reefs, and publishes it to DockerHub if it has. The detailed working mechanism of the Promoter can be found in [repo](https://github.com/OctopusDeploy/ExecutionContainersPromoter).

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Can you link to the runbook as well please


Finally, once an image is promoted to DockerHub, we can say for sure that the version is readily cached for all production Dynamic Workers. The Octopus Server UI checks this registry to guide customers to use the latest version.

```mermaid
sequenceDiagram
participant wtb as Worker Tools build
participant a as Artifactory (Staging)
participant dwb as Dynamic Worker VM Image build
participant p as Promoter
participant d as DockerHub (Production)
participant u as UI

wtb ->> a: Push to
dwb ->> a: Pull from
loop
p -->> dwb: check if cached in prod
end
p ->> d: Push to
u -->> d: Get and suggest latest tag

```

## Which Versions to Cache

When the Dynamic Worker VM images are built, the most recent versions of Worker Tools images will be pulled from Artifactory and cached.

Previously, only one version of the images was cached. This caused long downloading time for some customers, especially those using Windows. We encouraged users to configure an absolute version number for Worker Tools. When this version was no longer the latest, slow deployments would occur.

To reduce the chance of introducing unexpected slow deployments, we now cache multiple versions of the Worker Tools. The [algorithm](https://github.com/OctopusDeploy/DynamicWorkerVmImages/blob/master/Win2019/scripts/cache-docker-images.ps1) depicted in the following diagram is used to select versions to cache, which balances the disk space on Dynamic Worker VMs and the popularity of the Worker Tools images being used.

```mermaid
flowchart TD
A(All versions published on Artifactory) --> B(Remove any ad-hoc suppressed versions)
B --> C(Get latest N versions <br> N = 5 for Ubuntu <br> N = 3 for Windows)
B --> D(Get latest N major versions <br> N = 3 for Ubuntu <br> N = 2 for Windows)
C --> E(Combine)
D --> E
E --> F(Add any ad-hoc versions to cache)
F --> G(Take at most N <br> N = 5 for Ubuntu <br> N = 2 for Windows)
G --> H(Versions to cache)
```