[rdo-list] Multiple tools for deploying and testing TripleO

Christopher Brown cbrown2 at ocf.co.uk
Tue Aug 2 08:12:12 UTC 2016


Hello RDOistas (I think that is the expression?),

Another year, another OpenStack deployment tool. :)

On Mon, 2016-08-01 at 18:59 +0100, Ignacio Bravo wrote:
> If we are talking about tools, I would also want to add something
> with regards to user interface of these tools. This is based on my
> own experience:
>
> I started trying to deploy Openstack with Staypuft and The Foreman.
> The UI of The Foreman was intuitive enough for the discovery and
> provisioning of the servers. The OpenStack portion, not so much.

This is exactly mine also. I think this works really well in very large
enterprise environments where you need to split out services over more
than three controllers. You do need good in-house puppet skills though
so better for enterprise with a good sysadmin team.

> Forward a couple of releases and we had a TripleO GUI (Tuskar, I
> believe) that allowed you to graphically build your Openstack cloud.
> That was a reasonable good GUI for Openstack.

Well, I found it barely usable. It was only ever good as a graphical
representiation of what the build was doing. Interacting with it was
not great.

> Following that, TripleO become a script based installer, that
> required experience in Heat templates. I know I didn’t have it and
> had to ask in the mailing list about how to present this or change
> that. I got a couple of installs working with this setup.

Works well now that I understand all the foibles and have invested time
into understanding heat templates and puppet modules. Its good in that
it forces you to learn about orchestration which is such an important
end-goal of cloud environments.

> In the last session in Austin, my goal was to obtain information on
> how others were installing Openstack. I was pointed to Fuel as an
> alternative. I tried it up, and it just worked. It had the
> discovering capability from The Foreman, and the configuration
> options from TripleO. I understand that is based in Ansible and
> because of that, it is not fully CentOS ready for all the nodes (at
> least not in version 9 that I tried). In any case, as a deployer and
> installer, it is the most well rounded tool that I found.

This is interesting to know. I've heard of Fuel of course but there are
some politics involved - it still has the team:single-vendor tag but
from what I see Mirantis are very keen for it to become the default
OpenStack installer. I don't think being Ansible-based should be a
problem - we are deploying OpenShift on OpenStack which uses Openshift-
ansible - this recently moved to Ansible 2.1 without too much
disruption.

> I’d love to see RDO moving into that direction, and having an easy to
> use, end user ready deployer tool.

If its as good as you say its definitely worth evaluating. From our
point of view, we want to be able to add services to the pacemaker
cluster with some ease - for example Magnum and Sahara - and it looks
like there are steps being taken with regards to composable roles and
simplification of the pacemaker cluster to just core services.

But if someone can explain that better I would appreciate it.

Regards

> IB
>
>
> __
> Ignacio Bravo
> LTG Federal, Inc
> www.ltgfederal.com
>
>
> > On Aug 1, 2016, at 1:07 PM, David Moreau Simard <dms at redhat.com>
> > wrote:
> >
> > The vast majority of RDO's CI relies on using upstream
> > installation/deployment projects in order to test installation of
> > RDO
> > packages in different ways and configurations.
> >
> > Unless I'm mistaken, TripleO Quickstart was originally created as a
> > mean to "easily" install TripleO in different topologies without
> > requiring a massive amount of hardware.
> > This project allows us to test TripleO in virtual deployments on
> > just
> > one server instead of, say, 6.
> >
> > There's also WeIRDO [1] which was left out of your list.
> > WeIRDO is super simple and simply aims to run upstream gate jobs
> > (such
> > as puppet-openstack-integration [2][3] and packstack [4][5])
> > outside
> > of the gate.
> > It'll install dependencies that are expected to be there (i.e,
> > usually
> > set up by the openstack-infra gate preparation jobs), set up the
> > trunk
> > repositories we're interested in testing and the rest is handled by
> > the upstream project testing framework.
> >
> > The WeIRDO project is /very/ low maintenance and brings an
> > exceptional
> > amount of coverage and value.
> > This coverage is important because RDO provides OpenStack packages
> > or
> > projects that are not necessarily used by TripleO and the reality
> > is
> > that not everyone deploying OpenStack on CentOS with RDO will be
> > using
> > TripleO.
> >
> > Anyway, sorry for sidetracking but back to the topic, thanks for
> > opening the discussion.
> >
> > What honestly perplexes me is the situation of CI in RDO and OSP,
> > especially around TripleO/Director, is the amount of work that is
> > spent downstream.
> > And by downstream, here, I mean anything that isn't in TripleO
> > proper.
> >
> > I keep dreaming about how awesome upstream TripleO CI would be if
> > all
> > that effort was spent directly there instead -- and then that all
> > work
> > could bear fruit and trickle down downstream for free.
> > Exactly like how we keep improving the testing coverage in
> > puppet-openstack-integration, it's automatically pulled in RDO CI
> > through WeIRDO for free.
> > We make the upstream better and we benefit from it simultaneously:
> > everyone wins.
> >
> > [1]: https://github.com/rdo-infra/weirdo
> > [2]: https://github.com/rdo-infra/ansible-role-weirdo-puppet-openst
> > ack
> > [3]: https://github.com/openstack/puppet-openstack-integration#desc
> > ription
> > [4]: https://github.com/rdo-infra/ansible-role-weirdo-packstack
> > [5]: https://github.com/openstack/packstack#packstack-integration-t
> > ests
> >
> > David Moreau Simard
> > Senior Software Engineer | Openstack RDO
> >
> > dmsimard = [irc, github, twitter]
> >
> > David Moreau Simard
> > Senior Software Engineer | Openstack RDO
> >
> > dmsimard = [irc, github, twitter]
> >
> >
> > On Mon, Aug 1, 2016 at 11:21 AM, Arie Bregman <abregman at redhat.com>
> > wrote:
> > > Hi,
> > >
> > > I would like to start a discussion on the overlap between tools
> > > we
> > > have for deploying and testing TripleO (RDO & RHOSP) in CI.
> > >
> > > Several months ago, we worked on one common framework for
> > > deploying
> > > and testing OpenStack (RDO & RHOSP) in CI. I think you can say it
> > > didn't work out well, which eventually led each group to focus on
> > > developing other existing/new tools.
> > >
> > > What we have right now for deploying and testing
> > > --------------------------------------------------------
> > > === Component CI, Gating ===
> > > I'll start with the projects we created, I think that's only fair
> > > :)
> > >
> > > * Ansible-OVB[1] - Provisioning Tripleo heat stack, using the OVB
> > > project.
> > >
> > > * Ansible-RHOSP[2] - Product installation (RHOSP). Branch per
> > > release.
> > >
> > > * Octario[3] - Testing using RPMs (pep8, unit, functional,
> > > tempest,
> > > csit) + Patching RPMs with submitted code.
> > >
> > > === Automation, QE ===
> > > * InfraRed[4] - provision install and test. Pluggable and
> > > modular,
> > > allows you to create your own provisioner, installer and tester.
> > >
> > > As far as I know, the groups is working now on different
> > > structure of
> > > one main project and three sub projects (provision, install and
> > > test).
> > >
> > > === RDO ===
> > > I didn't use RDO tools, so I apologize if I got something wrong:
> > >
> > > * About ~25 micro independent Ansible roles[5]. You can either
> > > choose
> > > to use one of them or several together. They are used for
> > > provisioning, installing and testing Tripleo.
> > >
> > > * Tripleo-quickstart[6] - uses the micro roles for deploying
> > > tripleo
> > > and test it.
> > >
> > > As I said, I didn't use the tools, so feel free to add more
> > > information you think is relevant.
> > >
> > > === More? ===
> > > I hope not. Let us know if are familiar with more tools.
> > >
> > > Conclusion
> > > --------------
> > > So as you can see, there are several projects that eventually
> > > overlap
> > > in many areas. Each group is basically using the same tasks
> > > (provision
> > > resources, build/import overcloud images, run tempest, collect
> > > logs,
> > > etc.)
> > >
> > > Personally, I think it's a waste of resources. For each task
> > > there is
> > > at least two people from different groups who work on exactly the
> > > same
> > > task. The most recent example I can give is OVB. As far as I
> > > know,
> > > both groups are working on implementing it in their set of tools
> > > right
> > > now.
> > >
> > > On the other hand, you can always claim: "we already tried to
> > > work on
> > > the same framework, we failed to do it successfully" - right, but
> > > maybe with better ground rules we can manage it. We would
> > > defiantly
> > > benefit a lot from doing that.
> > >
> > > What's next?
> > > ----------------
> > > So first of all, I would like to hear from you if you think that
> > > we
> > > can collaborate once again or is it actually better to keep it as
> > > it
> > > is now.
> > >
> > > If you agree that collaboration here makes sense, maybe you have
> > > ideas
> > > on how we can do it better this time.
> > >
> > > I think that setting up a meeting to discuss the right
> > > architecture
> > > for the project(s) and decide on good review/gating process,
> > > would be
> > > a good start.
> > >
> > > Please let me know what do you think and keep in mind that this
> > > is not
> > > about which tool is better!. As you can see I didn't mention the
> > > time
> > > it takes for each tool to deploy and test, and also not the full
> > > feature list it supports.
> > > If possible, we should keep it about collaborating and not
> > > choosing
> > > the best tool. Our solution could be the combination of two or
> > > more
> > > tools eventually (tripleo-red, infra-quickstart? :D )
> > >
> > > "You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. I hope some
> > > day
> > > you'll join us and the infra will be as one" :)
> > >
> > > [1] https://github.com/redhat-openstack/ansible-ovb
> > > [2] https://github.com/redhat-openstack/ansible-rhosp
> > > [3] https://github.com/redhat-openstack/octario
> > > [4] https://github.com/rhosqeauto/InfraRed
> > > [5] https://github.com/redhat-openstack?utf8=%E2%9C%93&query=ansi
> > > ble-role
> > > [6] https://github.com/openstack/tripleo-quickstart
> > >
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> > >
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--
Regards,

Christopher Brown
OpenStack Engineer
OCF plc

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