[openstack-dev] [new][app-catalog] App Catalog next steps

Morgan Fainberg morgan.fainberg at gmail.com
Thu May 28 07:29:06 UTC 2015


On Wed, May 27, 2015 at 5:33 PM, Joe Gordon <joe.gordon0 at gmail.com> wrote:

>
>
> On Wed, May 27, 2015 at 4:27 PM, Fox, Kevin M <Kevin.Fox at pnnl.gov> wrote:
>
>>  I'd say, tools that utilize OpenStack, like the knife openstack plugin,
>> are not something that you would probably go to the catalog to find. And
>> also, the recipes that you would use with knife would not be specific to
>> OpenStack in any way, so you would just be duplicating the config
>> management system's own catalog in the OpenStack catalog, which would be
>> error prone. Duplicating all the chef recipes, and docker containers,
>> puppet stuff, and ..... is a lot of work...
>>
>
> I am very much against duplicating things, including chef recipes that use
> the openstack plugin for knife. But we can still easily point to external
> resources from apps.openstack.org. In fact we already do (
> http://apps.openstack.org/#tab=heat-templates&asset=Lattice).
>
>
>>
>> The vision I have for the Catalog (I can be totally wrong here, lets
>> please discuss) is a place where users (non computer scientists) can visit
>> after logging into their Cloud, pick some app of interest, hit launch, and
>> optionally fill out a form. They then have a running piece of software,
>> provided by the greater OpenStack Community, that they can interact with,
>> and their Cloud can bill them for. Think of it as the Apple App Store for
>> OpenStack.  Having a reliable set of deployment engines (Murano, Heat,
>> whatever) involved is critical to the experience I think. Having too many
>> of them though will mean it will be rare to have a cloud that has all of
>> them, restricting the utility of the catalog. Too much choice here may
>> actually be a detriment.
>>
>>
> calling this a catalog, which it sounds accurate, is confusing since
> keystone already has a catalog.   Naming things is unfortunately a
> difficult problem.
>

This is in itself turns into a really unfortunately usability issue for a
number of reason; colliding namespaces that end users need to be aware of
serves to generate confusion. Even the choices made naming things currently
in use by OpenStack (I openly admit Keystone is particularly bad in this
light) have this issue. I would support a "catalog-like" name that limits
confusion especially when it comes to conveying this information to the end
users (not just deployers and operators).

I will reiterate Joe's statement: Naming things is unfortunately a
difficult problem.


>
> I respectfully disagree with this vision. I mostly agree with the first
> part about it being somewhere users can go to find applications that can be
> quickly deployed on OpenStack (note all the gotchas that Monty described
> here). The part I disagree with is about limiting the deployment engines to
> invented here. Even if we have 100 deployment engines on
> apps.openstack.org, it would be very easy for a user to filter by the
> deployment engines they use so I do not agree with your concern about too
> many choices here being a detriment (after all isn't OpenStack about
> choices?).
>
>
++

We should be as inclusive as we can be. There are many cases of prior art
where (as long as it's workable) we can do filtering (someone brought up
the mobile app stores). Even if we want to be measured in ensuring the
filtering works before opening the flood gates, allowing alternate
deployment engines is a good thing. It makes OpenStack more usable and more
desirable as a platform


> Secondly IMHO the notion that 'if it wasn't invented here we shouldn't
> support it' [0] is a dangerous one that results on us constantly
> re-inventing the wheel while alienating the larger developer community by
> saying there solutions are no good, you should use the OpenStack version of
> it.
>
>
> OpenStack isn't a single 'thing' it is a collection of 'things' and user's
> should be able to pick and choose which components they want and which
> components they want to get from elsewhere.
>
> [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_invented_here
>
>
> If chef, or what ever other configuration management system became
>> multitenant aware, and integrated into OpenStack and provided by the Cloud
>> providers, then maybe it would fit into the app store vision?
>>
>
> I am not sure why this matters?  As a dependency you simply state chef,
> and either require users to provide it or tell them to use a chef heat
> template, glance image, etc.
>
>
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Kevin
>> ------------------------------
>> *From:* Joe Gordon [joe.gordon0 at gmail.com]
>> *Sent:* Wednesday, May 27, 2015 3:20 PM
>> *To:* OpenStack Development Mailing List (not for usage questions)
>> *Subject:* Re: [openstack-dev] [new][app-catalog] App Catalog next steps
>>
>>
>>
>> On Fri, May 22, 2015 at 9:06 PM, Christopher Aedo <caedo at mirantis.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> I want to start off by thanking everyone who joined us at the first
>>> working session in Vancouver, and those folks who have already started
>>> adding content to the app catalog. I was happy to see the enthusiasm
>>> and excitement, and am looking forward to working with all of you to
>>> build this into something that has a major impact on OpenStack
>>> adoption by making it easier for our end users to find and share the
>>> assets that run on our clouds.
>>>
>>
>>  Great job. This is very exciting to see, I have been wanting something
>> like this for some time now.
>>
>>
>>>
>>> The catalog: http://apps.openstack.org
>>> The repo: https://github.com/stackforge/apps-catalog
>>> The wiki: https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/App-Catalog
>>>
>>> Please join us via IRC at #openstack-app-catalog on freenode.
>>>
>>> Our initial core team is Christopher Aedo, Tom Fifield, Kevin Fox,
>>> Serg Melikyan.
>>>
>>> I’ve started a doodle poll to vote on the initial IRC meeting
>>> schedule, if you’re interested in helping improve and build up this
>>> catalog please vote for the day/time that works best and get involved!
>>> http://doodle.com/vf3husyn4bdkui8w
>>>
>>> At the summit we managed to get one planning session together. We
>>> captured that on etherpad[1], but I’d like to highlight here a few of
>>> the things we talked about working on together in the near term:
>>>
>>> -More information around asset dependencies (like clarifying
>>> requirements for Heat templates or Glance images for instance),
>>> potentially just by providing better guidance in what should be in the
>>> description and attributes sections.
>>> -With respect to the assets that are listed in the catalog, there’s a
>>> need to account for tagging, rating/scoring, and a way to have
>>> comments or a forum for each asset so potential users can interact
>>> outside of the gerrit review system.
>>> -Supporting more resource types (Sahara, Trove, Tosca, others)
>>>
>>
>>  What about expanding the scope of the application catalog to any
>> application that can run *on* OpenStack, versus the implied scope of
>> applications that can be deployed *by* (heat, murano, etc.) OpenStack and
>> *on* OpenStack services (nova, cinder etc.). This would mean adding room
>> for Ansible roles that provision openstack resources [0]. And more
>> generally it would reinforce the point that there is no 'blessed' method of
>> deploying applications on OpenStack, you can use tools developed
>> specifically for OpenStack or tools developed elsewhere.
>>
>>
>>  [0]
>> https://github.com/ansible/ansible-modules-core/blob/1f99382dfb395c1b993b2812122761371da1bad6/cloud/openstack/os_server.py
>>
>>
>>> -Discuss using glance artifact repository as the backend rather than
>>> flat YAML files
>>> -REST API, enable searching/sorting, this would ease native
>>> integration with other projects
>>> -Federated catalog support (top level catalog including contents from
>>> sub-catalogs)
>>> - I’ll be working with the OpenStack infra team to get the server and
>>> CI set up in their environment (though that work will not impact the
>>> catalog as it stands today).
>>>
>>
>>  I am pleased to see moving this to OpenStack Infra is a high priority.
>>
>>  A quick nslookup of http://apps.openstack.org shows it us currently
>> hosted on linode at
>> http://nb-23-239-6-45.fremont.nodebalancer.linode.com/. And last I
>> checked linode isn't OpenStack powered.  apps.openstack.org is a great
>> example of the type of application that should be easy to deploy with
>> OpenStack, since as far as I can tell it just needs a web server and that
>> is it. So wearing my OpenStack developer hat on, why did you go with linode
>> and not any one of the OpenStack based public clouds [1]? If OpenStack is
>> not a good solution for workloads like this, then it would be great to know
>> how what needs work.
>>
>>
>>  [1] https://www.openstack.org/marketplace/public-clouds/
>>
>>
>>> There were a ton of great ideas that came up and it was clear there
>>> was WAY more to discuss than we could accomplish in one short session
>>> at the summit.  I’m looking forward to continuing the conversation
>>> here on the mailing list, on IRC, and in Tokyo as well!
>>>
>>> [1] https://etherpad.openstack.org/p/YVR-app-catalog-plans
>>>
>>> -Christopher
>>>
>>>
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>>
>>
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