Open Stack

Excerpt from Zane Bitter's message on 26/03/2014 02:26:42:

> From: Zane Bitter <zbitter at redhat.com>
> To: openstack-dev at lists.openstack.org
> Date: 26/03/2014 02:27
> Subject: Re: [openstack-dev] [Murano][Heat] MuranoPL questions?
>

<snip>

> > Cloud administrators are usually technical guys that are capable of
> > learning HOT and writing YAML templates. They know exact configuration
> > of their cloud (what services are available, what is the version of
> > OpenStack cloud is running) and generally understands how OpenStack
> > works. They also know about software they intent to install. If such
guy
> > wants to install Drupal he knows exactly that he needs HOT template
> > describing Fedora VM with Apache + PHP + MySQL + Drupal itself. It is
> > not a problem for him to write such HOT template.
>
> I'm aware that TOSCA has these types of constraints, and in fact I
> suggested to the TOSCA TC that maybe this is where we should draw the
> line between Heat and some TOSCA-compatible service: HOT should be a
> concrete description of exactly what you're going to get, whereas some
> other service (in this case Murano) would act as the constraints solver.
> e.g. something like an image name would not be hardcoded in a Murano
> template, you have some constraints about which operating system and
> what versions should be allowed, and it would pick one and pass it to
> Heat. So I am interested in this approach.

I can just support Zane's statements above. We are working on exactly those
issues in the TOSCA YAML definition, so it would be ideal to just
collaborate on this. As Zane said, there currently is a thinking that some
TOSCA-compliant layer could be a (maybe thin) layer above Heat that
resolves a more abstract (thus more portable) template into something
concrete, executable. We have started developing code (early versions are
on stackforge already) to find out the details.

>
> The worst outcome here would be to end up with something that was
> equivalent to TOSCA but not easily translatable to the TOSCA Simple
> Profile YAML format (currently a Working Draft). Where 'easily
> translatable' preferably means 'by just changing some names'. I can't
> comment on whether this is the case as things stand.
>

The TOSCA Simple Profile in YAML is a working draft at the moment, so we
are pretty much open for any input. So let's see to get the right folks
together and get it right. Since the Murano folks have indicated before
that they are evaluating the option to join the OASIS TC, I am optimistic
that we can get the streams together. Having implementation work going on
here in this community in parallel to the standards work, and both streams
inspiring each other, will be fun :-)


Regards,
Thomas