openstack team mailing list archive

[George Reese <george.reese@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The Rackspace compute API is actually one of the better cloud APIs out there. It's a pretty damn good basis for an OpenStack Nova API. 

EC2, on the other hand, is a pretty obnoxious API and I've already outlined my thoughts on its role as a defacto API on my blog.

Having said that, there is basically no difference between the OpenStack API and a Rackspace API that has not changed in 2 years. In other words, there's been no attempt to improve the API based on two year's of learning, no attempt to step back and model the problem of cloud computing in general, it uses some goofy Rackspace terminology like "Flavor", and there's been no attempt to expose the features of OpenStack that don't exist in the current Rackspace API.

The biggest difference is authentication. That's been left up to the implementor. Yuck! Pick an authentication scheme and live with it!

The most important thing right now would not be to re-write the API, but to create specs for other parts of OpenStack like volumes and integrate them into the structure of the current API. It shouldn't be too hard. I absolutely don't understand why, after a year of work, all we have is clone of the Rackspace API labeled 1.1.

-George

On Aug 27, 2011, at 12:34 PM, Michael Shuler wrote:

> Preface: I am not very familiar with Nova.
> 
> On 08/26/2011 01:19 PM, Devin Carlen wrote:
>> I believe we should have had a Rackspace API module just like we have
>> an EC2 API module.  Then the OpenStack API wouldn't have been
>> burdened by the historical decisions around the Rackspace API.
>> 
>> But that is ancient history at this point.
> 
> So that I can better understand, as well as for others that may not
> know, would it be possible to get a basic explanation of why "it is
> hard" to modify Nova, now, to modularize the Rackspace API?
> 
> "basic" == non-technical highlights in simple english, please.  This
> sounds to me like a bad architectural decision that people are living
> with - so, why not admit that and make it a priority to change?
> 
> -- 
> Kind regards,
> Michael
> 
> <snipped "it's been over and year and it is hard" sounding excuses(?)>
> 
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--
George Reese - Chief Technology Officer, enStratus
e: george.reese@xxxxxxxxxxxxx    t: @GeorgeReese    p: +1.207.956.0217    f: +1.612.338.5041
enStratus: Governance for Public, Private, and Hybrid Clouds - @enStratus - http://www.enstratus.com
To schedule a meeting with me: http://tungle.me/GeorgeReese

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