[openstack-dev] [Neutron][LBaaS] Requirements and API revision progress

Carlos Garza carlos.garza at rackspace.com
Wed Apr 16 23:17:27 UTC 2014


On Apr 16, 2014, at 4:31 PM, Eugene Nikanorov <enikanorov at mirantis.com<mailto:enikanorov at mirantis.com>> wrote:

Hi folks,

I've briefly looked over the doc.

I think whole idea to base the API on Atlas misses the content switching use case, which is very important:
We need multiple pools within loadbalancer, and API doesn't seem to allow that.
If it would, then you'll face another problem: you need to reference those pools somehow inside the json you use in POST.
There are two options here: use names or IDs, both are putting constraints and create complexity for both user of such API and for the implementation.

That particular problem becomes worse when it comes to objects which might not have names while it's better to not provide ID in POST and rely on their random generation. E.g. when you need to create references between objects in json input - you'll need to create artificial attributes just for the parser to understand that such input means.

So that makes me think that right now a 'single-call API' is not flexible enough to comply with our requirements.

    We have demonstrated that you can create loadbalancers in separate transactions and in a single call fashion using both reference_ids to previous pools and as well as using a transient names to create objects in the same single call and reference them later on in other objects. The single call API is very flexible in that it allows you to create sub objects(We proposed transient ids to allow the user to avoid creating duplicate objects with different ids) on the fly as well as reference preexisting objects by id. The allowance for transient ids is adding flexibility to the api not taking away from it as you declared. I would like you to really be clear on what "our requirements"? What requirement is our single API call violating?

    We have thus far attempted to support a single call API that doesn't interfere with multiple smaller object creation calls. If we are just adding to the API  in a demonstrably workable fashion what is the real objection.


While I understand that it might be simpler to use such API for some cases, it makes complex configurations fall back to our existing approach which is creating configuration on per object basis.
While the problem with complex configurations is not sorted out, I'd prefer if we focus on existing 'object-oriented' approach.

    Your basically saying
P1: "The single API call proposal doesn't support *ALL* complex configurations"
P2: " if the single API proposal doesn't support *ALL* complex configurations the proposal should be rejected"

We have demonstrated that the proposed single API call can handle complex configurations via transient ids. So we already disagree with preposition 1.

We don't agree with preposition 2 either:
    We believe it is unfair to punish the API end user due to the religious belief that "The single API calls must support all possible configurations or you as the customer can't be allowed to use the single API call even for simpler configurations."

We want the single API call proposal to be as useful as possible so we are like wise looking at ways to have it solve ALL complex configurations and so far we feel transient IDs solve this problem already.

    Is the real objection that a single API call makes the implementation too complex? We are advocating that a single API makes it easier on the end user of the API and are of the impression that its better to have a complex implementation inside our neutron/lbaas code rather then passing that complexity down to the end user of the API.

    We don't object to multiple smaller object creation transactions we just want the addition of having single API call.


On the other hand, without single-call API the rest of proposal seems to be similar to approaches discussed in https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Neutron/LBaaS/LoadbalancerInstance/Discussion
    Since you linked the object model proposals could you also link the "rest of the proposals" or are you referring to our draft as "rest of proposal"?


Thanks,
Eugene.





On Thu, Apr 17, 2014 at 12:59 AM, Brandon Logan <brandon.logan at rackspace.com<mailto:brandon.logan at rackspace.com>> wrote:
Sorry about that.  It should be readable now.
________________________________
From: Eugene Nikanorov [enikanorov at mirantis.com<mailto:enikanorov at mirantis.com>]
Sent: Wednesday, April 16, 2014 3:51 PM

To: OpenStack Development Mailing List (not for usage questions)
Subject: Re: [openstack-dev] [Neutron][LBaaS] Requirements and API revision progress

Hi Brandon,

Seems that doc has not been made public, so please share.

Thanks,
Eugene.


On Thu, Apr 17, 2014 at 12:39 AM, Brandon Logan <brandon.logan at rackspace.com<mailto:brandon.logan at rackspace.com>> wrote:
Here is Jorge and team’s API proposal based on Atlas.  The document has some questions and answers about why decisions were made.  Feel free to open up a discussion about these questions and answers and really about anything.   This can be changed up to fit any flaws or use cases we missed that this would not support.

There is a CLI example at the bottom along with a possible L7 switching API model.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mTfkkdnPAd4tWOMZAdwHEx7IuFZDULjG9bTmWyXe-zo/edit

Thanks,
Brandon Logan

From: Eugene Nikanorov <enikanorov at mirantis.com<mailto:enikanorov at mirantis.com>>
Reply-To: "openstack-dev at lists.openstack.org<mailto:openstack-dev at lists.openstack.org>" <openstack-dev at lists.openstack.org<mailto:openstack-dev at lists.openstack.org>>
Date: Tuesday, April 15, 2014 at 7:00 AM
To: "openstack-dev at lists.openstack.org<mailto:openstack-dev at lists.openstack.org>" <openstack-dev at lists.openstack.org<mailto:openstack-dev at lists.openstack.org>>

Subject: Re: [openstack-dev] [Neutron][LBaaS] Requirements and API revision progress

Hi Stephen,

Thanks for a good summary. Some comments inline.


On Tue, Apr 15, 2014 at 5:20 AM, Stephen Balukoff <sbalukoff at bluebox.net<mailto:sbalukoff at bluebox.net>> wrote:

So! On this front:

1. Does is make sense to keep filling out use cases in Samuel's document above? I can think of several more use cases that our customers actually use on our current deployments which aren't considered in the 8 cases in Samuel's document thus far. Plus nobody has create any use cases from the cloud operator perspective yet.

I treat Sam's doc as a source of use cases to triage API proposals. If you think you have use cases that don't fit into existing API or into proposed API, they should certainly be brought to attention.


2. It looks like we've started to get real-world data on Load Balancer features in use in the real world. If you've not added your organization's data, please be sure to do so soon so we can make informed decisions about product direction. On this front, when will we be making these decisions?
I'd say we have two kinds of features - one kind is features that affect or even define the object model and API.
Other kind are features that are implementable within existing/proposed API or require slight changes/evolution.
First kind is the priority: while some of such features may or may not be implemented in some particular release, we need to implement proper infrastructure for them (API, obj model)

Oleg Bondarev (he's neutron core) and me are planning and mostly interested to work on implementing generic stuff like API/obj model and adopt haproxy driver to it. So our goal is to make implementation of particular features simpler for contributors and also make sure that proposed design fits in general lbaas architecture. I believe that everyone who wants to see certain feature may start working on it - propose design, participate in discussions and start actually writing the code.



3. Jorge-- I know an action item from the last meeting was to draft a revision of the API (probably starting from something similar to the Atlas API). Have you had a chance to get started on this, and are you open for collaboration on this document at this time? Alternatively, I'd be happy to take a stab at it this week (though I'm not very familiar with the Atlas API-- so my proposal might not look all that similar).

+1, i'd like to see something as well.


What format or template should we be following to create the API documentation?  (I see this here:  http://docs.openstack.org/api/openstack-network/2.0/content/ch_preface.html  but this seems like it might be a little heavy for an API draft that is likely to get altered significantly, especially given how this discussion has gone thus far. :/ )

Agree, that's too heavy for API sketch. I think a set of resources with some attributes plus a few cli calls is what could show the picture.

Thanks,
Eugene.

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