Open Stack

On Thu, Nov 14, 2013 at 01:41:22PM -0500, Jay Pipes wrote:
> So while I have been on vacation, I've been thinking about Solum and Heat.
> 
> And I have some lingering questions in my mind that make me question
> whether a new server project is actually necessary at all, and
> whether we really should just be targeting innovation and resources
> towards the Heat project.
> 
> What exactly is Solum's API going to control that is not already
> represented in Heat's API and the HOT templating language? At this
> point, I'm really not sure, and I'm hoping that we can discuss this
> important topic before going any further with Solum. Right now, I
> see so much overlap that I'm questioning where the differences
> really are.

Heat has always been primarily focussed on infrastructure orchestration,
and we've resisted implementing PaaSish functionality directly inside Heat,
because it's always been considered something to be layered on top of Heat
(deployed via not implemented by), not something we should prescribe a
specific implementation of.

So I argue there is not "so much overlap", Solum has a different scope to
Heat, and it will leverage Heat for some aspects of it's implementation
(similar to TripleO, Trove, and what is being proposed for Savanna).

I view this as a success for Heat, and an indication that we're providing
sufficiently flexible interfaces to allow users with very different
requirements to build on top of our orchestration functionality.

I think a very powerful characteristic of OpenStack is that we have
multiple separate, but closely integrated components.  IMO this fits well
with traditional unix philosophies and sane engineering practices
(modularity, composition, simplicity).

Steve