Feature Overview (aka. Goal Summary)  

Provide base images for RHEL image mode so that customer can more easier and faster use MicroShift.

Goals (aka. expected user outcomes)

Create and maintain base images that be use to:

1. test drive MicroShift, e.g. simple bootc one of the microshift base images and it results in a running microshift clusters
2. use as a base layer for customers / partners to add their own solution on top of them. They will benefit from faster turnaround time and easy of use.

Requirements (aka. Acceptance Criteria):

1. Build, release and maintain base images to a well known image registry (same as with openshift, different repo, openshift pull secret required for access)
2. The following base images are needed: (core means: no optional rpms) 
   1.  microshift-minimal: just the core rpms 
   2.  microshift-minimal-offline: core rpms plus container images
   3. special images needed for FIPS compliance?
   4. special images needed for EUS releases?
3. Images need to be updated on every Z stream release
4. Images need to be mirrorable to internal registries for air-gapped deployments
5. If customer bootc from these base images, they have to be able to update their edge systems using regular image mode update mechanisms
6. images can be use as base layers, to add addition optional components (e.g. olm), and of course customer specific workload.
7. All of the above for both X86 and ARM

Questions to Answer (Optional):

1. any legal implications to clarifiy, as resulting systems will not be subscribed?
2. special images needed for FIPS compliance?
   1. FIPS support for bootc is introduced in RHEL 9.5. See this video from 23:20 for a demo and this slide
3. special images needed for EUS releases?

Out of Scope

1. ?

Background

n/a

Customer Considerations

There might be customers who want to use this in production very early, as image mode solves some problems of image builder (FIPS compliance, rpm modularity). In that case, we would need to process a support exception.

Documentation Considerations

Needs to be added to the doc into the installation section for image mode bases installations.

Interoperability Considerations

n/a