[openstack-dev] [heat] [glance] Heater Proposal

Jay Pipes jaypipes at gmail.com
Sat Dec 7 13:51:12 UTC 2013


On 12/06/2013 08:55 PM, Clint Byrum wrote:
> Excerpts from Jay Pipes's message of 2013-12-06 16:46:24 -0800:
>> On 12/06/2013 01:38 PM, Clint Byrum wrote:
>>> Excerpts from Jay Pipes's message of 2013-12-05 21:32:54 -0800:
>>>> On 12/05/2013 04:25 PM, Clint Byrum wrote:
>>>>> Excerpts from Andrew Plunk's message of 2013-12-05 12:42:49
>>>>> -0800:
>>>>>>> Excerpts from Randall Burt's message of 2013-12-05 09:05:44
>>>>>>> -0800:
>>>>>>>> On Dec 5, 2013, at 10:10 AM, Clint Byrum <clint at
>>>>>>>> fewbar.com> wrote:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> Excerpts from Monty Taylor's message of 2013-12-04
>>>>>>>>> 17:54:45 -0800:
>>>>>>>>>> Why not just use glance?
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> I've asked that question a few times, and I think I can
>>>>>>>>> collate the responses I've received below. I think
>>>>>>>>> enhancing glance to do these things is on the table:
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> 1. Glance is for big blobs of data not tiny templates. 2.
>>>>>>>>> Versioning of a single resource is desired. 3.
>>>>>>>>> Tagging/classifying/listing/sorting 4. Glance is designed
>>>>>>>>> to expose the uploaded blobs to nova, not users
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> My responses:
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> 1: Irrelevant. Smaller things will fit in it just fine.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Fitting is one thing, optimizations around particular
>>>>>>>> assumptions about the size of data and the frequency of
>>>>>>>> reads/writes might be an issue, but I admit to ignorance
>>>>>>>> about those details in Glance.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Optimizations can be improved for various use cases. The
>>>>>>> design, however, has no assumptions that I know about that
>>>>>>> would invalidate storing blobs of yaml/json vs. blobs of
>>>>>>> kernel/qcow2/raw image.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I think we are getting out into the weeds a little bit here. It
>>>>>> is important to think about these apis in terms of what they
>>>>>> actually do, before the decision of combining them or not can
>>>>>> be made.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I think of HeatR as a template storage service, it provides
>>>>>> extra data and operations on templates. HeatR should not care
>>>>>> about how those templates are stored. Glance is an image
>>>>>> storage service, it provides extra data and operations on
>>>>>> images (not blobs), and it happens to use swift as a backend.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> If HeatR and Glance were combined, it would result in taking
>>>>>> two very different types of data (template metadata vs image
>>>>>> metadata) and mashing them into one service. How would adding
>>>>>> the complexity of HeatR benefit Glance, when they are dealing
>>>>>> with conceptually two very different types of data? For
>>>>>> instance, should a template ever care about the field "minRam"
>>>>>> that is stored with an image? Combining them adds a huge
>>>>>> development complexity with a very small operations payoff, and
>>>>>> so Openstack is already so operationally complex that HeatR as
>>>>>> a separate service would be knowledgeable. Only clients of Heat
>>>>>> will ever care about data and operations on templates, so I
>>>>>> move that HeatR becomes it's own service, or becomes part of
>>>>>> Heat.
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> I spoke at length via G+ with Randall and Tim about this earlier
>>>>> today. I think I understand the impetus for all of this a little
>>>>> better now.
>>>>>
>>>>> Basically what I'm suggesting is that Glance is only narrow in
>>>>> scope because that was the only object that OpenStack needed a
>>>>> catalog for before now.
>>>>>
>>>>> However, the overlap between a catalog of images and a catalog
>>>>> of templates is quite comprehensive. The individual fields that
>>>>> matter to images are different than the ones that matter to
>>>>> templates, but that is a really minor detail isn't it?
>>>>>
>>>>> I would suggest that Glance be slightly expanded in scope to be
>>>>> an object catalog. Each object type can have its own set of
>>>>> fields that matter to it.
>>>>>
>>>>> This doesn't have to be a minor change to glance to still have
>>>>> many advantages over writing something from scratch and asking
>>>>> people to deploy another service that is 99% the same as Glance.
>>>>
>>>> My suggestion for long-term architecture would be to use Murano
>>>> for catalog/metadata information (for images/templates/whatever)
>>>> and move the block-streaming drivers into Cinder, and get rid of
>>>> the Glance project entirely. Murano would then become the
>>>> catalog/registry of objects in the OpenStack world, Cinder would be
>>>> the thing that manages and streams blocks of data or block devices,
>>>> and Glance could go away. Imagine it... OpenStack actually
>>>> *reducing* the number of projects instead of expanding! :)
>>>
>>> Have we not learned our lesson with Nova-Net/Neutron yet? Rewrites
>>> of existing functionality are painful.
>>
>> I said *long-term* above, Clint.
>>
>>> The Murano-concerned people have already stated they are starting
>>> over on that catalog.
>>>
>>> I suggest they start over by expanding Glance's catalog. If the
>>> block streaming bits of Glance need to move somewhere else, that
>>> sounds like a completely separate concern that distracts from this
>>> point.
>>
>> Yes, the block streaming bits of Glance are separate -- sorry for
>> distracting from your point. However, Glance's architecture actually
>> went from having the registry and streaming pieces separated to having
>> the two pieces more closely interwoven in the last two release cycles.
>> It's harder now, IMO, to separate out the "registry" aspects of Glance
>> from the block management pieces. Which is why I suggested using Murano
>> as the catalog since there is already a separate catalog sub-project in
>> Murano and the Murano devs are familiar with this space.
>>
>> Please try not to shoot the messenger here -- I'm only bringing up my
>> thoughts on where the various related projects seem to be moving.
>>
>>> And to be clear, (I think I will just stop talking as I think I've
>>> made this point), my point is, we have a catalog, let's make it
>>> better.
>>
>> Well, we have multiple catalogs... which one shall we make better?
>> Sounds like contributors are coalescing around using Glance as the
>> catalog -- which is fine I suppose -- but I think it would have been
>> easier to use the old Glance Registry server (which now does not exist)
>> as this catalog service, than the newer Glance API, which has gotten
>> sidetracked with things like image tasks (which IMO should never have
>> been added to the Images API; the taskflow or Mistral projects should
>> have handled this functionality).
>>
>> Anyway, just figured I'd offer some commentary. Sorry if you think I was
>> causing trouble.
>>
>
> Your commentary is much appreciated, and I apologize for shooting you,
> Mr. Messenger. It really is your fault for being such an easy target! ;)

LOL :) I know we're all working towards the same goals. It's good to see 
all the options on the table.

Best,
-jay




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