Containers-roadmap: [ecr] [request]: cache layers between repositories

[jespersoderlund]

Tell us about your request
Currently ECR doesn't cache image layers between repositories and with ECRs model of creating a repo per image this leads to quite poor performance, especially in situations where there are many images being built on a common base-image.

Each image would be a separate upload taking the full volume of the image taking significantly longer to push/replicate. This becomes an issue with a globally distributed architecture where 100s of services built on a common base-image needs to be replicated to remote regions.

In most other docker repositories the model is different with a single repository serving multiple images.

Which service(s) is this request for?
ECR

Tell us about the problem you're trying to solve. What are you trying to do, and why is it hard?
We want to have quick push/replication of images used for micro services built on a common base-image (which becomes layers in the service-specific images) across regions.

Are you currently working around this issue?
Trying to parallelise request as much as possible, but this is causing unnecessary cost and still wont be as quick as if the shared layers could be reused across repos.

Additional context

Attachments

[jswetzen]

This is a real pain point for us. Current workaround is to separate images using tags instead of repositories, but it's ugly! Docker Hub an Artifactory solves this without problem and stops unnecessary uploading if the layer already exists.

[richstokes]

This would save a lot of bandwidth too, not having to push/pull the same base layers every time..