Open Stack

I have not received any more feedback on this so I have started the
deprecation process. [1]

[1] https://review.opendev.org/q/topic:deprecate-chrony

-yoctozepto

On Thu, Feb 25, 2021 at 7:02 PM Radosław Piliszek
<radoslaw.piliszek at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hello Fellow OpenStackers interested in Kolla's way.
>
> The topic should be pretty self-explanatory but let me provide the
> details and background.
>
> We are currently working on the Wallaby release and, since we are
> cycle-trailing, it is the right moment for us to reflect upon the
> various cleanup plans we had (and have).
> One of those is the drop of the chrony container.
> Chrony serves the time synchronization purpose which is required for
> healthy operations (I hope I don't need to explain this point further,
> time sync is essential for most services nowadays).
> It is still deployed by default by Kolla Ansible.
> The point is, most default (even minimal ones) host OS installations
> come with some form of NTP client, be it chrony, ntpd, timesyncd or
> whatever else there is. :-) This applies also to provisioning
> solutions like MAAS or Foreman.
> And Kolla Ansible actually stands on its head to detect and disable
> those to avoid multiple time sync daemons hell as it may disrupt
> normal operations (mostly due to having different time sources but
> also due to different compensation algorithms [or rather just their
> actual configuration] and the fact that each tool assumes to be the
> only source of time changes).
> We seem to have placed a relatively sane precheck to detect this but
> effective disabling may prove tricky, especially since it is very easy
> to get it installed at any point.
> The NTP client is considered a very basic service these days.
> It also seems that several users known to us do not use the chrony
> container and instead orchestrate timesync elsewhere.
>
> Hence, our current plan is to:
> 1) Deprecate the chrony container in the Wallaby cycle.
> - in Kolla Ansible this would mean also warning users that they use it
> and defaulting to not using it (with docs and a reno); docs would
> suggest an Ansible way to coordinate timesync
> - in Kolla docs and a reno
> 2) Drop the chrony container from both the places
>
> I know Kayobe (the "highest-level" member of the Kolla project) is
> planning to incorporate timesync handling by external Ansible role
> means so their users should be covered.
>
> Please let us know if you have any comments on the plan above.
> Or generally any suggestions you would like us to hear.
>
> Cheers!
>
> -yoctozepto