Open Stack

Hi all

For quite some time we (Heat team) have wanted to be able to send messages
to our
users (by user I do not mean the Operator, but the User that is interacting
with the client).

What do I mean by "user messages", and how do they differ from our current
log messages
and notifications?
- Our current logs are for the operator and have information that the user
should not have
  (ip addresses, hostnames, configuration options, other tenant info etc..)
- Our notifications (that Ceilometer uses) *could* be used, but I am not
sure if it quite fits.
  (they seem a bit heavy weight for a log message and aimed at higher level
events)

These messages could be (based on Heat's use case):

- Specific user oriented log messages (distinct from our normal operator
logs)
- Deprecation messages (if they are using old resource properties/template
features)
- Progress and resource state changes (an application doesn't want to poll
an api for a state change)
- Automated actions (autoscaling events, time based actions)
- Potentially integrated server logs (from in guest agents)

I wanted to raise this to "[all]" as it would be great to have a general
solution that
all projects can make use of.

What do we have now:
- The user can not get any kind of log message from services. The closest
thing
  ATM is the notifications in Ceilometer, but I have the feeling that these
have a different aim.
- nova console log
- Heat has a DB "event" table for users (we have long wanted to get rid of
this)

What do other clouds provide:
- https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/logging
- https://cloud.google.com/logging/docs/
- https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/cloudwatch-log-service/
- http://aws.amazon.com/cloudtrail/
(other examples...)

What are some options we could investigate:
1. remote syslog
    The user provides a rsyslog server IP/port and we send their messages
to that.
    [pros] simple, and the user could also send their server's log messages
to the same
              rsyslog - great visibility into what is going on.

              There are great tools like loggly/logstash/papertrailapp that
source logs from remote syslog
              It leaves the user in control of what tools they get to use.

    [cons] Would we become a spam agent (just sending traffic to an
IP/Port) - I guess that's how remote syslog
               works. I am not sure if this is an issue or not?

              This might be a lesser solution for the use case of "an
application doesn't want to poll an api for a state change"

              I am not sure how we would integrate this with horizon.

2. Zaqar
    We send the messages to a queue in Zaqar.
    [pros] multi tenant OpenStack project for messaging!

    [cons] I don't think Zaqar is installed in most installations (tho'
please correct me here if this
               is wrong). I know Mirantis does not currently support Zaqar,
so that would be a problem for me.

              There is not the level of external tooling like in option "1"
(logstash and friends)

3. Other options:
   Please chip in with suggestions/links!


https://blueprints.launchpad.net/heat/+spec/user-visible-logs


Regards
Angus
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