Open Stack

Monday the patch for the creation of the Baremetal-SIG was approved by
the TC and UC [1]. It's exciting to see the level of interest we've
already seen in the planning etherpad [2], and it's time to start kicking
off our first initiatives.

I'd like to begin by addressing some of the comments in the patch.

* Wiki vs Etherpad. My own personal preference is to start with the
  Etherpad as we get our feet underneath us. As more artifacts and begin
  to materialize, I think a Wiki would be an excellent location for
  hosting the information. My primary concern with Wikis is their
  tendency (from my point of view) to become out of date with the goals
  of a group. So, to begin with, unless there are any strong objections,
  we can do initial planning on the Etherpad and graduate to more
  permanent and resilient landing pages later.

* Addressing operational aspects of Ironic. I see this as an absolutely
  critical aspect of the SIG. We already have organization devoted mostly
  to development, the Ironic team itself. SIGs are meant to be a
  collaborative effort between developers, operators, and users. We can
  send a patch up to clarify that in the governance document. If you are
  an operator, please use this [baremetal-sig] subject heading to start
  discussions and organize shared experiences and documentation.

* The SIG is focused on all aspects of running bare-metal and Ironic,
  whether it be as a driver to Nova, a stand-alone service, or built into
  another project as a component. One of the amazing things about Ironic
  is its flexibility and versatility. We want to highlight that there's
  more than one way to do things with Ironic.

* Chairs. I would very much like for this to be a community experience,
  and welcome nominations for co-chairs. I've found in the past that 2-3
  co-chairs makes for a good balance, and given the number of people who
  have expressed interest in the SIG in general I think we should go
  ahead and appoint two extra people to co-lead the SIG. If this
  interests you, please self-nominate here and we can use lazy consensus
  to round out the rest of the leadership. If we have several people step
  up, we can consider a stronger form of voting using the systems
  available to us.

First goals:

I think that an important first goal is in the publication of a
whitepaper outlining the motivation, deployment methods, and case studies
surrounding OpenStack bare metal, similar to what we did with the
containers whitepaper last year. A goal would be to publish at the Denver
Open Infrastructure summit. Some initial thoughts and rough schedule can
be found here [3], and also linked from the planning etherpad.

One of the nice things about working on the whitepaper is we can also
generate a bunch of other expanded content based on that work. In
particular, I'd very much like to highlight deployment scenarios and case
studies. I'm thinking of the whitepaper as a seed from which multiple
authors demonstrate their experience and expertise to the benefit of the
entire community.

Another goal we've talked about at the Foundation is the creation of a
new bare metal logo program. Distinct from something like the OpenStack
Powered Trademark, which focuses on interoperability between OpenStack
products with an emphasis on interoperability, this program would be
devoted to highlighting products that are shipping with Ironic as a key
component of their bare metal management strategy. This could be in many
different configurations, and is focused on the shipping of code that
solves particular problems, whether Ironic is user-facing or not. We're
very much in the planning stages of a program like this, and it's
important to get community feedback early on about if you would find it
useful and what features you would like to see a program like this have.
A few items that we're very interested in getting early feedback on are:

* The Pixie Boots mascot has been an important part of the Ironic
  project, and we would like to apply it to highlight Ironic usage within
  the logo program. 
* If you're a public cloud, sell a distribution, provide installation
  services, or otherwise have some product that uses Ironic, what is your
  interest in participating in a logo program?
* In addition to the logo, would you find collaboration to build content
  on how Ironic is being used in projects and products in our ecosystem
  useful?

Finally, we have the goals of producing and highlighting content for
using and operating Ironic. A list of possible use-cases is included in
the SIG etherpad. We're also thinking about setting up a demo booth with
a small set of server hardware to demonstrate Ironic at the Open
Infrastructure summit.

On all of those items, your feedback and collaboration is essential.
Please respond to this mailing list if you have thoughts or want to
volunteer for any of these items, and also contribute to the etherpad to
help organize efforts and add any resources you might have available.
Thanks to everyone, and I'll be following up soon with more information
and updates.

-Chris

[1] https://review.openstack.org/#/c/634824/
[2] https://etherpad.openstack.org/p/bare-metal-sig
[3] https://etherpad.openstack.org/p/bare-metal-whitepaper