Models of sharing images

When you share an image, you are create a direct, unique relationship with each consumer of the image. The relationship between the producer of an image and each consumer of the image evolves through multiple stages.

1-to-1 sharing

When you share an image, you are creating a relationship between you and one or more additional users that gives those users rights to see and use the image. Those users become members of that relationship.

This model is known as 1-to-1 sharing because, even though you can share an image to multiple people, you are actually creating one relationship with each user. For example, if Producer A shares an image to Consumer A and Consumer B, the following relationships are created:

• Producer A > shared image > Consumer A

• Producer A > shared image > Consumer B

The producer Jan has an independent relationship with each consumer.

Because every sharing relationship is independent:

• You can revoke the rights to the shared image from one consumer without affecting its availability to other users.

• The image is available only to the specific consumer to whom you have shared it. It is not 1-to-many sharing, where you are able to share an image to all other cloud users.

Handshaking

Sharing an image was designed with a handshake process model, which ensures that users involved in a sharing request have both awareness and control throughout the process.

The image producer creates an image and creates an image member for the image consumer. The image consumer accepts or rejects the image.

1. The image producer identifies the image and the consumers to whom the image will be shared.

2. The image producer issues one or more requests to add those consumers as members of the image.

3. Each of the consumers can choose to accept or reject the image sharing request, which determines the consumer’s member status. The member status controls whether the image appears in the consumer’s image list.

Image members can have any of the following statuses:

• Accepted: The consumer accepts the invitation to potentially use the offered image, and the image appears in the consumer’s image list. The producer knows that the consumer made an active decision about the image.

• Rejected: The consumer declines the invitation to potentially use the offered image, and the image does not appears in the consumer’s image list. The producer knows that the consumer made an active decision about the image.

Note

While an image is in rejected status, the consumer can use the image but must know the image ID since the image is not in the image list.

• Pending: The consumer neither accepts nor declines the invitation to potentially use the offered image, and might not have noticed the offer. The producer might elect to send a reminder that the image is available, but this is outside the scope of the Cloud Images API.

Note

While an image is in pending status, the consumer can use the image but must know the image ID since the image is not shown in the image list.

See also

Image properties Data immutability On-demand images Importing and exporting images Scheduled images Creating custom images from servers Creating cloud servers from base images: Default base image configurations Base images life cycle Patching base images

Sharing images: Managing shared images Models of sharing images Planning to share or use shared images Preparing to share images Image-sharing roles Getting support for shared images

Understanding Cloud Images introduces key ideas. To learn how to put these ideas to work, start at Actions for Cloud Images.