Open Stack

Hi All,

I'd like to propose adding packaging scripts (a Makefile and a RPM
spec file) [0] to the nova tree in plugins/xenserver/xenapi to make
the setup process for Xen Cloud Platform (XCP) OpenStack admins
simpler (specifically removing the need to have a nova source code
check to *use* the plugins, like the developers do [1]). I've
(loosely) based these scripts on the Citrix OpenStack build scripts
used for Citrix XenServer OpenStack plugins. The distinction with
these proposed xenapi-openstack-plugins is that they are stand alone
and installable on XCP (or even XenServer).

I think that having them in the nova tree next to the plugins that
they package makes the most sense, since it will make it more obvious
for xenapi plugin developers that when they add a plugin they should
update the spec file.

Xen.org can host the binary RPMs, since the most common use case will
be users of XCP adding these plugins so that they can use OpenStack to
manage their XCP server.

Also, I'd like to anticipate some questions and clarify our overall
plan a bit. For completeness I'll mention Citrix's commercial
OpenStack effort, which most of you are probably already aware of,
that will be a commercially supported product by Citrix. Distinct from
that there is XCP -- the Xen Cloud Platform -- (the open source
version of Citrix XenServer - compared here [2]) that is supported by
the Xen.org community. XCP is basically a Xen distribution that has a
special CentOS management domain (dom0) on which RPMs can be
installed. (As mentioned XCP is the target audience of the output of
the propose packaging script). The most recent development is called
project Kronos [3], which is a port of the xenapi (xapi) and all the
other necessary XCP components to Debian/Ubuntu.

The Kronos audience will not use this RPM, but instead will want
Debian packages. So at that point, we could either extend the Makefile
and add Debian packaging information or alternatively we could use the
OpenStack Ubuntu packagers [4] infrastructure to build and distribute
the Debian packages containing the XenAPI OpenStack plugins.

To summarize the implicit questions:

1) Is the plan to have the RPM build scripts in the nova tree acceptable?

2) Is it desirable to keep the Ubuntu packaging code in [4] or will it
be just as fine to have the build script in the nova tree?

3) Does the overall distinction between Citrix XenServer, XCP, and
project Kronos make sense?

Thanks in advance for any and all feedback. I'll propose the merge of
[0] as soon as I hit send and you can feel free to make comments on
that as well.

Thanks,
Todd

[0] http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~todd-deshane/nova/working/revision/1245
[1] http://wiki.openstack.org/XenServerDevelopment
[2] http://wiki.xen.org/xenwiki/XCP/XenServer_Feature_Matrix
[3] http://wiki.xensource.com/xenwiki/XCP_Roadmap
[4] https://launchpad.net/~openstack-ubuntu-packagers

-- 
Todd Deshane
http://www.linkedin.com/in/deshantm
http://www.xen.org/products/cloudxen.html
http://runningxen.com/