Open Stack

Mate Lakat <mate.lakat at citrix.com> writes:

> Hi,
>
> We are working to get test coverage for XenServer, and wanted to share
> the ideas, to see if we are on the right path. The goal would be to use
> the official CI to run tests on XenServer.
>
> 1 - Installation
>
> So the issue, is that there is no XenServer image available in the RS
> cloud. In order to install an XS instance, we can take a standard image,
> execute a script on it, and end up with a running XS. The only issue,
> that during this install phase, several reboots are performed. To add
> support for the install phase in nodepool, see this change:
>
>     https://review.openstack.org/61463

This seems reasonable.

> 2 - Prepare your system for imaging
>
> After nodepool finished with the installation, it should be able to
> access a standard distribution on the public IP, so it will happily
> execute the setup script. However, before creating a snapshot from the
> instance, we would need to tell the hypervisor, that it'll be
> snapshotted - so during the next boot, it will be able to pick up new IP
> addresses, etc (sort of Windows' sysprep)
>
>     We haven't committed any patch for this yet

You could probably just do this in the bootstrap script, right?

> After these bits solved, several instances could be launched from the
> snapshot, and we expect that with a proper localrc, they will be
> well-behaving nodes.
>
> 3 - Wire up to the system
>
> Our understanding, is that we'll need to:
>
> Add the install, and prepare scripts to:
>     config/modules/openstack_project/files/nodepool/scripts
> Configure the images in:
>     config/modules/openstack_project/templates/nodepool/nodepool.yaml.erb
> Add localrc tweaks here:
>     devstack-gate/devstack-vm-gate.sh
> Add jobs here:
>     config/modules/openstack_project/files/jenkins_job_builder/config/devstack-gate.yaml
> And ask zuul to trigger them here:
>     config/modules/openstack_project/files/zuul/layout.yaml
>
> The wip changes to these are proposed by John:
>     https://review.openstack.org/#/c/60900/
>     https://review.openstack.org/#/c/60902/
>     https://review.openstack.org/#/c/60903/

Thanks for such a detailed plan.  It is clear and makes a lot of sense,
and seems to be correct.

Two points in 60902 caught my attention:

  The server created is a XenServer with an Ubuntu VM to run the
  openstack services. This nested Xen virt will only currently work in
  the Rackspace cloud. Also, because nested virt will slow things down,
  lets try running this on performance flavors to give us the best
  chance of running things at a reasonable speed.

Is it possible for this to run on other cloud providers (eg, HP, and
potentially others in the future)?  It's important that our gate jobs be
able to run on multiple providers.

The image you select has "(PVHVM beta)" in the name.  Is that related?
What does it mean?

Thanks,

Jim