Problem Statement:

Podman supports a highly beneficial image pull policy known as "newer." This policy dictates that an image will be downloaded to the host if a more recent version of the "latest" tag has been updated in the container registry. This feature is crucial for the customer to maintain up-to-date execution environments with minimal administrative overhead.

However, within Private Automation Hub (PAH), the current options for image pull policies are restricted to "never," "missing," and "always." This limitation presents a significant operational challenge when an execution image is updated within PAH. To ensure that the customer’s Execution Environment (EE) nodes are synchronized with the most recent image, they are currently compelled to adopt one of the following inefficient methods:

• Temporarily switch the pull policy to "always": This approach forces a download every time, regardless of whether a new image version is actually available, leading to unnecessary bandwidth consumption and increased load on the registry and EE nodes.
• Develop and execute a custom playbook: This requires additional development effort and ongoing maintenance to force synchronization of images across all of their EE nodes.

Proposed Solution:

The customer requests the implementation of the "newer" image pull policy within Private Automation Hub.

Benefits of Implementation:

Integrating the "newer" pull policy into PAH would significantly enhance the efficiency and automation of the customer’s image management workflow by:

• Enabling Automatic Updates: Execution Images on EE nodes would automatically update when a newer version is detected in the registry, eliminating the need for manual intervention.
• Reducing Operational Overhead: This would remove the necessity of temporarily switching to the "always" policy or developing custom synchronization playbooks, freeing up administrative resources.
• Ensuring Consistency: It would guarantee that their execution environments are consistently running the latest approved images, reducing potential discrepancies and improving reliability.
• Optimizing Resource Usage: Downloads would only occur when a newer image is genuinely available, optimizing bandwidth and storage utilization.

Implementing the "newer" pull policy in PAH would be a substantial improvement to its functionality, directly addressing a current operational pain point and contributing to more efficient and reliable automation processes.