2:35 p.m.
One of the goals of the RDO Packstack Quickstart is to give people a
successful and easy first-time experience deploying OpenStack, even if
what they're left with (an --allinone deployment) might not be, strictly
speaking, *useful* for much.
Today on IRC I asked if we might possibly work towards a similar
quickstart for RDO-Manager, where we make a bunch of assumptions and
automate whatever parts of it we can, and end up with a "do these three
steps" kind of thing, like the Packstack quickstart.
I've included the transcript of the conversation below, but since IRC
transcripts can be confusing after the fact, to summarize, slagle opined
that it might be feasible to have two paths - the full-featured path
that we currently have, but also something as I described above for your
first time.
I wanted to toss this out here for a larger audience to see whether this
seems like a reasonable goal to pursue?
<rbowen> Is it feasible that we might get the RDO-Manager instructions
down to a Quickstart-like page?
<rbowen> I don't even necessarily mean NOW, I mean, as a short/medium
term goal. The instructions are very intimidating.
<morazi> rbowen, I suspect we might be able to do that if we make a fair
number of assumptions and possibly try to leverage some amount of the
upstream CI work slagle is presently hacking on. slagle may violently
disagree in which case, ignore what I just said. ;-)
<slagle> morazi: rbowen : sure, we can trim whatever. just keep in mind
i might not be the best docs writer. we originally started small, but
that just caused a lot of mistakes/issues. so we made a conscious
decision to be explicit
<slagle> hence the current nature of the docs
<rbowen> Yeah, I think there's room for both types of docs, much like
there's room for the Packstack quickstart and the full-blown
do-it-by-hand OpenStack installation docs.
<morazi> slagle, oh, I was thinking about -- can we lift the ci script
and say -- your quickstart is to configure this script. The full blown
install is <link to docs>
<slagle> well, we're documenting the same tool
<slagle> and...are stated goal is not to be packstack
<slagle> i'm all for making it easy
<slagle> but we're still bound by how complex openstack is to install in
*real* world configurations
<morazi> rbowen, basically with a highly specific/opinionated virtual
environment I think we could make it really easy. If you want to inject
choice back into it, things get complex quickly. That's the crux to me
if that makes sense.
<rbowen> I think perhaps what I'm looking for isn't entirely realistic,
but it's kind of the "success first time" goal that was part of the
original Quickstart page.
<morazi> rbowen, what might be interesting is -- what are the
assumptions that the packstack quickstart makes for you? Can we easily
figure that out?
<rbowen> And then once you have a successful first time, you can learn
more about various steps.
<rbowen> The quickstart does kind of assume that you'll be left with
something that's ... well, not very useful.
<rbowen> But it gives you a flavor of it.
<slagle> rbowen: yea, agreed. it's about finding the right balance there
<rbowen> Much like the "how fast can you install OpenStack from scratch"
contests they had at OpenStack Summit.
<ibravo> for what it's worth, I followed the guides and they are already
simple. There is an appendix for more complex stuff
<slagle> the feedback swings from "this is too hard", then the more we
hide away behind scripts we start hearing "i don't know what this is
doing, too much is hidden"
<morazi> ibravo, cool, thx for that feedback!
<slagle> rbowen: so, 2 paths probably makes sense
<apevec> dmsimard, how come is enforcing, when it has -permissive- in
the name??
<morazi> ibravo, I tend to agree. They are pretty simple but there is a
lot there in terms of number of steps. nothing in particular is super
hard but you have to do many things.
<rbowen> ibravo: Ok, that's good to hear. I obviously need to block off
a half day at some point to work through it. I mostly skimmed through
and it was intimidating, but I was in a hurry.
--
Rich Bowen - rbowen(a)redhat.com
OpenStack Community Liaison
http://rdoproject.org/