Open Stack

Hi Dmitry,

I wanted to revisit this thread, as I see some of these interfaces
are now posted for review, and I have a couple of questions around
the naming (specifically for the "provide" action):

On Thu, May 19, 2016 at 03:31:36PM +0200, Dmitry Tantsur wrote:
<snip>
> The last step before the deployment it to make nodes "available" using the
> "provide" provisioning action. Such nodes are exposed to nova, and can be
> deployed to at any moment. No long-running configuration actions should be
> run in this state. The "manage" action can be used to bring nodes back to
> "manageable" state for configuration (e.g. reintrospection).

So, I've been reviewing https://review.openstack.org/#/c/334411/ which
implements support for "openstack overcloud node provide"

I really hate to be the one nitpicking over openstackclient verbiage, but
I'm a little unsure if the literal translation of this results in an
intuitive understanding of what happens to the nodes as a result of this
action. So I wanted to have a broaded discussion before we land the code
and commit to this interface.

More info below:
<snip>
> what do you propose?
> --------------------
> 
> I would like the new TripleO mistral workflows to start following the ironic
> state machine closer. Imagine the following workflows:
> 
> 1. register: take JSON, create nodes in "manageable" state. I do believe we
> can automate the enroll->manageable transition, as it serves the purpose of
> validation (and discovery, but lets put it aside).
> 
> 2. provide: take a list of nodes or all "managable" nodes and move them to
> "available". By using this workflow an operator will make a *conscious*
> decision to add some nodes to the cloud.

Here, I think the problem is that while the dictionary definition of
"provide" is "make available for use, supply" (according to google), it
implies obtaining the node, not just activating it.

So, to me "provide node" implies going and physically getting the node that
does not yet exist, but AFAICT what this action actually does is takes an
existing node, and activates it (sets it to "available" state)

I'm worried this could be a source of operator confusion - has this
discussion already happened in the Ironic community, or is this a TripleO
specific term?

To me, something like "openstack overcloud node enable" or maybe "node
activate" would be more intuitive, as it implies taking an existing node
from the inventory and making it active/available in the context of the
overcloud deployment?

Anyway, not a huge issue, but given that this is a new step in our nodes
workflow, I wanted to ensure folks are comfortable with the terminology
before we commit to it in code.

Thanks!

Steve