Open Stack

On 10/25/2017 12:55 PM, Mathieu Gagné wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On Wed, Oct 25, 2017 at 10:17 AM, Loo, Ruby <ruby.loo at intel.com> wrote:
>> Hello ironic'ers,
>>
>> A while ago, we approved a spec to add node tag support to ironic [1]. The
>> feature itself did not land yet (although some of the code has). Now that
>> the (nova) community has come up with traits, ironic wants to support node
>> traits, and there is a spec proposing that [2]. At the ironic node level,
>> this is VERY similar to the node tag support, so the thought is to drop (not
>> implement) the node tagging feature, since the node traits feature could be
>> used instead. There are a few differences between the tags and traits.
>> "Traits" means something in OpenStack, and there are some restrictions about
>> it:
>>
>> - max 50 per node
>>
>> - names must be one of those in os-traits library OR prefixed with 'CUSTOM_'
>>
>> For folks that wanted the node tagging feature, will this new node traits
>> feature work for your use case? Should we support both tags and traits? I
>> was wondering about e.g. using ironic standalone.
>>
>> Please feel free to comment in [2].
>>
>> Thanks in advance,
>>
>> --ruby
>>
>> [1]
>> http://specs.openstack.org/openstack/ironic-specs/specs/approved/nodes-tagging.html
>>
>> [2] https://review.openstack.org/#/c/504531/
>>
> 
> Are tags/traits serving a different purpose? One serves the purpose of
> helping the scheduling/placement while the other is more or less aims
> at grouping for the "end users"?
> I understand that the code will be *very* similar but who/what will be
> the consumers/users?
> I fell they won't be the same and could artificially limit its use due
> to technical/design "limitations". (must be in os-traits or be
> prefixed by CUSTOM)
> 
> For example which I personally foresee:
> * I might want to populate Ironic inventory from an external system
> which would also injects the appropriate traits.
> * I might also want some technical people to use/query Ironic and
> allow them to tag nodes based on their own needs while not messing
> with the traits part (as it's managed by an external system and will
> influence the scheduling later)
> 
> Lets not assume traits/tags have the same purpose and same user.

I agree with Matthieu 100% here.

Traits are structured, formalized, and set by the system or the operator 
against resource providers.

Tags are for end-users to, well, tag their instances with whatever 
strings they want.

Best,
-jay