[Rdo-list] Does RDO have a branding problem ?

[Graeme Gillies]

On 24/03/16 03:01, David Moreau Simard wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> This email has been on my mind for a while...
> Recently, we dropped the "RDO Manager" branding in favor of calling it
> like it is, Triple O [1]. Good.
> 
> On various IRC channels, mailing lists, or websites I will see things
> like these (names removed but trust me, actual logs from today) on a
> pretty regular basis:
> 
> - Hello everyone, can anyone advice how to add compute node with
> single NIC after setup openstack by RDO?
> - i'm new around here and just started to use rdo to deploy openstack
> i cannot seem to find one thing, is there a way to skip installing
> compute nodes services?
> 
> Even some people I consider knowledgeable in OpenStack development or
> operations (but deploy using either home-grown packages or UCA, for
> example) believe RDO is some sort of installer by Red Hat.
> 
> Do we need to reinforce that RDO is a packaging effort to provide
> packages for Red Hat based distributions ?
> I mean, I don't know how we can put this message up front more than it
> already is, it's pretty big enough on the front page of the website
> [2].
> 
> There is an important nuance between what RDO is and the installers
> that consume the RDO packages are.
> You can install OpenStack using RDO packages by hand [3] and the
> multiple different installers.
> 
> Am I the only one noticing this weird perception ? I've never really
> seen people saying "I have installed UCA, now what?".
> 
> [1]: https://www.rdoproject.org/blog/2016/02/rdo-manager-is-now-tripleo/
> [2]: https://www.rdoproject.org/
> [3]: http://docs.openstack.org/liberty/install-guide-rdo/
> 
> David Moreau Simard
> Senior Software Engineer | Openstack RDO
> 
> dmsimard = [irc, github, twitter]
> 
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> 

I greatly agree that RDO has a branding problem, or at least the RDO
website doesn't make it apparently cleanly enough that RDO is an
Openstack distribution and can be cleanly and easily obtained without an
installer.

One of the problems I raised last year with regards to RDO is that even
to me, it's still really confusing to understand how RDO the
distribution works, how to obtain it easily, and how pieces like
delorean, "stable", "trunk", "passed-ci", what's shipped in the centos
repos vs rdo,  etc. apply in context to upstream Openstack releases, and
there is no easy way from the RDO website to just quickly and easily get
the packages I am after, without our installer(s).

The current website really railroads you towards the Red Hat installers,
which I feel is a massive disservice as not everyone really wants to use
them, especially if you want to do an advanced or custom deployment
(leveraging Openstacks main feature, is customisation and flexibility).
I just tried then to find a clear concise page that gives me easy links
on how to obtain all the different versions currently on offer via rdo,
and couldn't find anything. Even rdoproject.org/repos just redirects to
a directory listing on fedorapeople.org, some parts of which tell me to
go look somewhere else. No context or explanation.

I would love to see the website more split down the middle, at least
from the initial landing page, into RDO the distribution itself, vs the
management/deployment tools also developed and maintained in the RDO
space. In fact, as other installer projects (openstack-ansible,
openstack-chef, Fuel, etc.) have or are getting RDO support, we should
be curating a bigger section on how to leverage RDO with your
installer/management tool of choice, not just packstack/tripleo. In
fact, there is this myopic view by a lot of groups/vendors that "my
installer is the best, use that!", when the reality is the best way to
deploy and maintain Openstack will be largely based off your own
experience with various tools, and your Operational maturity/workflow.
If you are a die hard chef fan, then using openstack-chef is probably
much more ideal to you than using a tool or configuration-management
language you have little experience with.

Similarly it would be good if we could get the ability for the website
to better curate the pages into some type of tree or spine leaf system.
Too often we have generic articles like "Horizon SSL" [1] which only
applies to 1 installer (packstack) and only for 1 release (it becomes
outdated or obseleted). Being able to start organising content like

RDO -> Distribution -> Liberty -> Release Notes

RDO -> Installers -> Packstack -> Enabling SSL In Horizon

Would greater improve the experience of using the documentation, and
allow people to keep curating and maintaining the articles relevant to
different sections they work on. This would also encourage further
participation from outside the core RDO community, as people from
openstack-ansible (as an example) could create

RDO -> Installers -> Openstack Ansible -> Using openstack-ansible with RDO

And flesh that out, or at least provide a link to the documentation in
their own project.

Anyway that is my 2c :)

Regards,

Graeme

[1] https://www.rdoproject.org/install/horizonssl/

-- 
Graeme Gillies
Principal Systems Administrator
Openstack Infrastructure
Red Hat Australia