Hey,
I'd like to add my 2 cents.

It's hard to upgrade a region, so when it comes to upgrade multiples regions, it's even harder.

Some operators also have their own downstream patchs / extensions / drivers which make the upgrade process more complex, so it take more time (for all reasons already given in the thread, need to update the CI, the tools, the doc, the people, etc).

One more thing is about consistency, when you have to manage multiple regions, it's easier if all of them are pretty identical. Human operation are always the same, and can eventually be automated.
This leads to keep going on with a fixed version of OpenStack to run the business.
When scaling, you (we) always chose security and consistency.

Also, Julia mentioned something true about contribution from operators. It's difficult for them for multiple reasons:
- pushing upstream is a process, which need to be taken into account when working on an internal fix.
- it's usually quicker to push downstream because it's needed. When it comes to upstream, it's challenged by the developers (and it's good), so it take time and can be discouraging.
- operators are not running master, but a stable release. Bugs on stables could be fixed differently than on master, which could also be discouraging.
- writing unit tests is a job, some tech operators are not necessarily developers, so this could also be a challenge.

All of these to say that helping people which are proposing a patch is a good thing. And as far as I can see, upstream developers are helping most of the time, and we should keep and encourage such behavior IMHO.

Finally, I would also vote for less releases or LTS releases (but it looks heavier to have this). I think this would help keeping up to date with stables and propose more patches from operators.

Cheers,
Arnaud.

Le 8 novembre 2021 20:43:18 GMT+01:00, Julia Kreger <juliaashleykreger@gmail.com> a écrit :

On Mon, Nov 8, 2021 at 10:44 AM Thierry Carrez <thierry@openstack.org> wrote:

 Ghanshyam Mann wrote:
 [...]
 Thanks Thierry for the detailed write up.

 At the same time, a shorter release which leads to upgrade-often pressure but
 it will have fewer number of changes/features, so make the upgrade easy and
 longer-release model will have more changes/features that will make upgrade more
 complex.

 I think that was true a few years ago, but I'm not convinced that still
 holds. We currently have a third of the changes volume we had back in
 2015, so a one-year release in 2022 would contain far less changes than
 a 6-month release from 2015.

I concur. Also, in 2015, we were still very much in a "move fast" mode
of operation as a community.

 Also, thanks to our testing and our focus on stability, the pain linked
 to the amount of breaking changes in a release is now negligible
 compared to the basic pain of going through a 1M-core deployment and
 upgrading the various pieces... every 6 months. I've heard of multiple
 users claiming it takes them close to 6 months to upgrade their massive
 deployments to a new version. So when they are done, they have to start
 again.

 --
 Thierry Carrez (ttx)


I've been hearing the exact same messaging from larger operators as
well as operators in environments where they are concerned about
managing risk for at least the past two years. These operators have
indicated it is not uncommon for the upgrade projects which consume,
test, certify for production, and deploy to production take *at least*
six months to execute. At the same time, they are shy of being the
ones to also "find all of the bugs", and so the project doesn't
actually start until well after the new coordinated release has
occurred. Quickly they become yet another version behind with this
pattern.

I suspect it is really easy for us as a CI focused community to think
that six months is plenty of time to roll out a fully updated
deployment which has been fully tested in every possible way. Except,
these operators are often trying to do just that on physical hardware,
with updated firmware and operatings systems bringing in new variables
with every single change which may ripple up the entire stack. These
operators then have to apply the lessons they have previously learned
once they have worked through all of the variables. In some cases this
may involve aspects such as benchmarking, to ensure they don't need to
make additional changes which need to be factored into their
deployment, sending them back to the start of their testing. All while
thinking of phrases like "business/mission critical".

I guess this means I'm in support of revising the release cycle. At
the same time, I think it would be wise for us to see if we can learn
from these operators the pain points they experience, the process they
leverage, and ultimately see if there are opportunities to spread
knowledge or potentially tooling. Or maybe even get them to contribute
their patches upstream. Not that all of these issues are easily solved
with any level of code, but sometimes they can include contextual
disconnects and resolving those are just as important as shipping a
release, IMHO.

-Julia