Open Stack

Hi guys.
When we have any kind of trouble, we hit the logs right away, and when 
we see the stacks, what i want to do is to copy & paste the error, and 
wait for the "search engine" to do its job, since at this point i 
consider myself a user, so, i try to think like one, and most of the 
time what i want, is not to ask for a problem, but to see if someone 
already has it.

Today i think there are enough data on launchpad to solve, or al least, 
give a very accurate hint about 90% of the problem a user may face 
(nova, swift, glance, maybe keystone) when they are stuck, but some 
times the search are not accurate enough for a search regarding an issue 
i know its there. so ... maybe i ended up using google search to look 
into lauchpad.

So ... first, launchpad works pretty well as a Q&A site for openstack 
projects, but at least, i feel theres no a good way to show all the 
experience is stored there to a "fresh" user, so a more than good search 
engine i think is a must, mainly because having lack of resources for 
showing an answer that is already solved to a user, lead to the user to, 
90% of the time, duplicate a question, and so .. a lot of admin work ( 
maybe deleting those, or teling the user it was already answered on THIS 
link), or the feeling of the Q&A system to be forsaken because of the 
amount of questions "unsolved".

A forum is more than ok also, because it gives the feeling of community 
and unity where the user feels confortable, but mixing that with a Q&A 
system, its a little difficult.

Making posts promoted to FAQS or post becoming GUIDES and going into the 
FAQS, and the search engine suggesting something like "Ok, if you didnt 
find your answer, maybe you are having troubles because of an 
implementation or a setup problem, why dont you go to the IMPLEMENTATION 
AND MOST IMPORTANT GUIDES to see if you can improve that and fix your 
real problem ??" is a nice to have, make the user confortable that they 
can find what they need, whitout asking for it ... in wich case, they 
actually can.

As a last note, from mercadolibre since we have a lot already tested, 
and working into production ( nova clusters, nova volumes, keystone, 
swift, glance ) we can really share our experience in the form of "THE 
DEFINITVE GUIDE TO ..." or something that, maybe doesnt actually fix a 
certain user problem, but helps them understand how things gets 
configured, and actually how they work 2gether, we can really help on 
this, but i think this guides need to be put in a place where the user 
actually knows they exists, and no like just one post on the forum, or a 
"question" on launchpad.

The official documentation is a great starting point, its has been 
greatly improved and we've always used it every time we tried a new 
openstack part of the solution, so .. nicely done there Anne.

hope this gives a little user perspective.

---
Alejandro
mercadolibre.com

On 11/30/2011 06:39 AM, Leandro Reox wrote:
> I think that the main problem is that we have many places to search 
> for information, but a few people giving helpful answers. A lot of 
> newcomers join the forum but particular setups problems sometimes 
> leads to packaging problems, bugs and we as moderators have to 
> redirect the user to re-post his problem on launchpad, starting over. 
> I think that we have to split packaging and developing questions vs 
> implementations doubts, concept misunderstanding, etc. The main reason 
> of people dropping Openstack on pre-production or testing environments 
> its cause they aren't even mid experienced python developers, and they 
> cant find a solution in a matter of time that they "experience with 
> the product" leaves them a "good taste" to invest more time trying to 
> implement it later. I read a lot of "that's and end-user question, 
> etc" don't you guys forget that actually the "end-users" are Companies 
> sysadmins maybe trying to deliver an real IaaS based on an Opensource 
> product like Openstack. We have a huge Openstack implementation using 
> almost every core product, and our environment is growing everyday 
> faster than we expected, but when we approach to implement a new 
> service, or integrate for example Keystone with Swift or Nova, we 
> fought for days, fixing a lot of code and ended-up on a packaging 
> problem, cloning the Cloudbuilders repo were the code was already 
> fixed. That sensation to "cross up" docs, and blogs, and examples, and 
> launchap question to get just to a test env, ends on companies leaving 
> Openstack as a "possible solution". We're pretty comfortable at python 
> so we love to face issues like this, but imagine a sysadmin reading 
> the docs, following line but line ending up with a non-working 
> environment asking himself why he did wrong, and maybe a magic "oh you 
> have to chmod all this folder" was missing on the docs.
> docs.openstack.org <http://docs.openstack.org> must be the bible for 
> users that want to try openstack out, the forums and the IRC to help 
> "final users out", and launchpad for issuing bugs, we need to work on 
> getting an updated documentation, getting a "my instances get stucked 
> on scheduling" or "i cannot ssh into instances" should not exist with 
> a clean and clear doc. We see a lot of people stuck in a single node 
> installation, or on his "devstack setup" thinking about going back 
> with they 3 vmware esxis nodes to create they VMs, and they never 
> experience the real benefits of running a true IaaS all the way.
> Leaving the people "googling or blogging up" a few minutes after their 
> setup is not good at all for the platform, we try to write up very 
> detailed installation posts on the forums that are very usefull for 
> the users, with tips and common issues that we faced installing the 
> product.
> We're helping out everyday on the IRC and the forums to reduce the 
> traffic o users hitting common issues, and of course Anne you can 
> count on us to improve the docs, so that sysadmins loose their fears 
> and feeling of this being "too greeny to production" and surprise 
> themselves like we do everyday after 5 months later running all of our 
> applications and our productive infrastructure over Openstack ( +1000 
> phy +6000 instances )
>
> Sorry for the long writing . My two cents!
>
> Regards
>
> Leandro Reox
> Sr. Infrastructure Engineer at mercadolibre.com <http://mercadolibre.com>
>
>
> On Tue, Nov 29, 2011 at 10:37 PM, Lloyd Dewolf <lloydostack at gmail.com 
> <mailto:lloydostack at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>     On Tue, Nov 29, 2011 at 11:16 AM, Stefano Maffulli
>     <stefano at openstack.org <mailto:stefano at openstack.org>> wrote:
>     > On Tue, 2011-11-29 at 10:10 -0800, Lloyd Dewolf wrote:
>     >> Where do I find this previous discussion?
>     >
>     > around here:
>     > https://lists.launchpad.net/openstack/msg02169.html
>     >
>     > What do you think of the requirements we're gathering for the Q&A
>     > system? I'd like your opinion on that as we move on.
>
>     Thanks Stefano. I really like everyone reframing the discussion to
>     figure out what our needs are as opposed to ... shiny!
>
>     I do think stackexchange (SE) is miles [1] ahead and the only system
>     that will meet the majority of our requirements.
>
>     If we can get our own Area51 then it's by far the best immediate
>     solution.
>
>     I spoke to a friend at Area51, and he suggested we might have
>     different results if we tried again. So I feel like this is on the
>     table if we want to pursue.
>
>
>     Of course, having very active SE participants (high reputation) put
>     the proposal forward and committing to it carries a lot of weight.
>
>     My reputation [2] is weak today, but I'm sure myself and others could
>     ramp up the levels quickly over the next few months.
>
>     Cheers,
>     Lloyd
>
>     --
>     1. See I'm getting used to United States customary units,
>     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Customary_units
>     2. http://stackexchange.com/users/25765?tab=accounts
>
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