Thanks everyone for your input!
This is not a simple topic to quickly discuss in ML, and it is not just about changes in Horizon code. Brief glance through OpenStack documentation pages finds lots of usages of the term Instance, say, in Nova. I'd like to organize a proper discussion with people from other projects at the next PTG. It would be great if you can join, so we can discuss and decide.
On 2025-05-29 13:18, Sean Mooney wrote:
[snip]
>>> One problem which I wanted to highlight with Instance naming, is a
>>> very unobvious one for those whose native language is English. But
>>> in both of my native languages, the word "Instance" is kind of
>>> either untranslatable, or does have a totally unrelated meaning to
>>> the tech industry. With that Server is totally widespread, used and
>>> understood.
>>> I tried to check translations for EC2 and GCP, but neither of them
>>> have actually translated these pages at all.
>> Now here I would disagree.
>> Server tends to imply hardware but it works equally for the person
>> bringing me lunch.
>> Having that also be description of virtual machines has actually led
>> to confusion in conversations.
>> Instance is at least different from the name of the hardware the
>> instance is running on.
>>
>> Why not call them VMs (vee-emm-s).
>> That is what they are.
>
> because they may not be vms and that would be very incorrect to use in
> horizon
>
> nova supprot provisioning workload called servers (rendered in horizon
> as instances) that can be physical machines (via ironic compute
> driver) or virutal machine (libvirt, vmware, zvm) or lxc containers
>
> each of these compute option are equally valid implementation fo a
> server/instance.
>
Ok. I stand corrected. Then Instance is likely the best choice in this case.
> in the past we also had nova-docker and out of three driver for hyperv
> or even a protoyp of composable hardware using intels Rackscale design
> software.
>
> https://docs.openstack.org/nova/latest/contributor/project-scope.html#compute-resources
>
>
> if some wanted to write a systemd machined container compute driver
> that would be a valid implementation of nova's compute api.
>
> nova is an abstraction over the compute context used to execute the
> workload but it is not just a vritual machine interface.
>
>
> that is why we use the term server because only commonality is that
> the compute context we commit to providing is somthing that
>
> is or looks lie a real machine in the same way that VPS hosting
> provider use the term to refer to thing
>
> like openvz container provisioned through cpannel.
>
>
> so it would be categorically in correct for horizon to refer to
> instances as VMs.
>
your point is well made.
It was my myopic thoughts about the recent issues I had with discussions
about the servers running the hypervisors and the servers running on the
hypervisors.
>
> horizon should either maintain the current nameing system to align to
> all the major cloud platform that use the term instance
>
> or it should adopt the official resource name which is `server`.
I can get behind either so long as there is consistency.
just my $0.02.
>
>
[snip]
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