Open Stack

On Thu, 2014-01-09 at 10:23 +0100, Flavio Percoco wrote:
> On 08/01/14 17:13 -0800, Nachi Ueno wrote:
> >Hi folks
> >
> >OpenStack process tend to have many config options, and many hosts.
> >It is a pain to manage this tons of config options.
> >To centralize this management helps operation.
> >
> >We can use chef or puppet kind of tools, however
> >sometimes each process depends on the other processes configuration.
> >For example, nova depends on neutron configuration etc
> >
> >My idea is to have config server in oslo.config, and let cfg.CONF get
> >config from the server.
> >This way has several benefits.
> >
> >- We can get centralized management without modification on each
> >projects ( nova, neutron, etc)
> >- We can provide horizon for configuration
> >
> >This is bp for this proposal.
> >https://blueprints.launchpad.net/oslo/+spec/oslo-config-centralized
> >
> >I'm very appreciate any comments on this.
> 
> I've thought about this as well. I like the overall idea of having a
> config server. However, I don't like the idea of having it within
> oslo.config. I'd prefer oslo.config to remain a library.
> 
> Also, I think it would be more complex than just having a server that
> provides the configs. It'll need authentication like all other
> services in OpenStack and perhaps even support of encryption.
> 
> I like the idea of a config registry but as mentioned above, IMHO it's
> to live under its own project.

Hi Nati and Flavio!

So, I'm -1 on this idea, just because I think it belongs in the realm of
configuration management tooling (Chef/Puppet/Salt/Ansible/etc). Those
tools are built to manage multiple configuration files and changes in
them. Adding a config server would dramatically change the way that
configuration management tools would interface with OpenStack services.
Instead of managing the config file templates as all of the tools
currently do, the tools would need to essentially need to forego the
tried-and-true INI files and instead write a bunch of code in order to
deal with REST API set/get operations for changing configuration data.

In summary, while I agree that OpenStack services have an absolute TON
of configurability -- for good and bad -- there are ways to improve the
usability of configuration without changing the paradigm that most
configuration management tools expect. One such example is having
include.d/ support -- similar to the existing oslo.cfg module's support
for a --config-dir, but more flexible and more like what other open
source programs (like Apache) have done for years.

All the best,
-jay