Abstract: The common practice between OpenStack users is to manually install a base operating system, boot it up, install packages, add necessary configuration and then snapshot it for later use. Much of this can be automated using kickstart files, Puppet, etc. but it’s still a tedious process. That’s where Image Factory comes into play. It allows you to describe your virtual image (the operating system, architecture, installed packages, etc.) and have it uploaded to various cloud providers (such as EC2, oVirt or OpenStack). This could be useful to the OpenStack users even without all the cross-cloud features.