[openstack-dev] [Heat] TOSCA, CAMP, CloudFormation, ???

Alex Heneveld alex.heneveld at cloudsoftcorp.com
Mon Apr 15 21:39:45 UTC 2013


I have refactored and expanded the "vocabulary" (@asalked's madness 
guide) now at:

     https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Heat/Vocabulary

--A


On 12/04/2013 15:36, Adrian Otto wrote:
> Clint,
>
> On Apr 12, 2013, at 2:22 PM, Clint Byrum <clint at fewbar.com>
>   wrote:
>
>> On 2013-04-12 08:45, Adrian Otto wrote:
>>> This proposal will utilize the existing Heat agent. We currently use
>>> SSH keypair injection on the API call to the Cloud Servers API to
>>> bootstrap compute nodes in the simple case. The idea is to leave that
>>> open to handle whatever the system Provider modules want to
>>> instrument. Please recognize that we want this DSL to work regardless
>>> of what the underlying hardware/cloud infrastructure is. It can work
>>> on your laptop with vagrant, with OpenStack, with a public cloud… that
>>> should not matter. The vendor specific implementations all go into the
>>> Provider plug-ins. The idea is to enable decentralized implementation
>>> of vendor-specific systems, and centralized sharing of best practices
>>> for application deployment. Imagine an OpenStack community repo of
>>> Heat Blueprints where everyone can publish their best practices.
>> So what I think you're saying is, Heat would have some intrinsic providers for compute, object storage, block storage, etc. Users would somehow be able to define their own providers inside compute servers via an API, which could then be referenced directly in the DSL? So if I want memcached, I write a provider definition for it, and somehow deliver it into the compute node and notify Heat of its presence?
>>
>> The spec is really unclear on how providers are defined (or I'm just overloaded with specs and can't comprehend it), but I am actually pretty excited to see a system that allows users to reference and manage compute-hosted things at the same level as "under the cloud" resources.
> Yes, you've got the idea. In the case of memcached, you might just want to build that up from compute instances, so you might not even involve a provider for that, it could simply be specified as a Component. That's not any different from what Heat can already do today. Here is another use case where Providers can make a lot of sense:
>
> Goal: Deploy my app on my chosen OpenStack based public cloud, using Heat for Dev/Test. For Production, deploy to my private OpenStack cloud.
>
> Scenario: My app depends on a MySQL database. My public cloud provider has a hosted "mysql" service that is offered through a Provider plug-in. It's there automatically because my cloud hosting company put it there.  I deploy, and finish my testing on the public cloud. I want to go to production now.
>
> Solution: The Provider gives you a way to abstract the different cloud implementations. I establish an equivalent Provider on my private OpenStack cloud using RedDwarf. I set up a Provider that offers "mysql" in my private cloud. Now the same setup works on both clouds, even though the API for my local "mysql" service may actually differ from the database provisioning API in the public cloud. Now I deploy on my "production" Environment in my private cloud, and it works!
>
> Not to blow your mind too much, but in the use case above, we assume that each cloud has its own hosted Heat service that speaks the Open API+DSL. You could also use one of the Heat services, and *not* the other. You define two Environments. One is for "dev/test" and uses Providers on the public cloud. The other is for "production", and it uses Providers on the private cloud. Now you can just decide where stuff gets provisioned by selecting the appropriate Environment. You might decide to just use the hosted Heat service from your public cloud, even when you are deploying into your private cloud.
>
> If that makes sense, you can take that idea a step further, and actually set up Environments that mix both public and private cloud infrastructure. Maybe you use provider A for your mission critical (persistent, HA) Components, and provider B for nightly batch processing jobs. Same Environment. Arbitrary number of clouds.
>
> Without a concept like Providers, application portability between public and private clouds can get a bit more convoluted. You may end up doing things like constructing the "mysql" service on top of compute nodes using Components for sake of portability, but this can cause you to sacrifice performance using a general purpose compute instances you find in a typical nova compute service, rather than the more performance tuned hosted database service your public cloud service may offer you.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Adrian
>
>
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