openstack team mailing list archive

[Leandro Reox <leandro.reox@xxxxxxxxx>]

I think that the main problem is that we have many places to search for
information, but a few people giving helpful answers. A lot of newcomers
join the forum but particular setups problems sometimes leads to packaging
problems, bugs and we as moderators have to redirect the user to re-post
his problem on launchpad, starting over. I think that we have to split
packaging and developing questions vs implementations doubts, concept
misunderstanding, etc. The main reason of people dropping Openstack on
pre-production or testing environments its cause they aren't even mid
experienced python developers, and they cant find a solution in a matter of
time that they "experience with the product" leaves them a "good taste" to
invest more time trying to implement it later. I read a lot of "that's and
end-user question, etc" don't you guys forget that actually the "end-users"
are Companies sysadmins maybe trying to deliver an real IaaS based on an
Opensource product like Openstack. We have a huge Openstack implementation
using almost every core product, and our environment is growing everyday
faster than we expected, but when we approach to implement a new service,
or integrate for example Keystone with Swift or Nova, we fought for days,
fixing a lot of code and ended-up on a packaging problem, cloning the
Cloudbuilders repo were the code was already fixed. That sensation to
"cross up" docs, and blogs, and examples, and launchap question to get just
to a test env, ends on companies leaving Openstack as a "possible
solution". We're pretty comfortable at python so we love to face issues
like this, but imagine a sysadmin reading the docs, following line but line
ending up with a non-working environment asking himself why he did wrong,
and maybe a magic "oh you have to chmod all this folder" was missing on the
docs.
docs.openstack.org must be the bible for users that want to try openstack
out, the forums and the IRC to help "final users out", and launchpad for
issuing bugs, we need to work on getting an updated documentation, getting
a "my instances get stucked on scheduling" or "i cannot ssh into instances"
should not exist with a clean and clear doc. We see a lot of people stuck
in a single node installation, or on his "devstack setup" thinking about
going back with they 3 vmware esxis nodes to create they VMs, and they
never experience the real benefits of running a true IaaS all the way.
Leaving the people "googling or blogging up" a few minutes after their
setup is not good at all for the platform, we try to write up very detailed
installation posts on the forums that are very usefull for the users, with
tips and common issues that we faced installing the product.
We're helping out everyday on the IRC and the forums to reduce the traffic
o users hitting common issues, and of course Anne you can count on us to
improve the docs, so that sysadmins loose their fears and feeling of this
being "too greeny to production" and surprise themselves like we do
everyday after 5 months later running all of our applications and our
productive infrastructure over Openstack ( +1000 phy +6000 instances )

Sorry for the long writing . My two cents!

Regards

Leandro Reox
Sr. Infrastructure Engineer at mercadolibre.com


On Tue, Nov 29, 2011 at 10:37 PM, Lloyd Dewolf <lloydostack@xxxxxxxxx>wrote:

> On Tue, Nov 29, 2011 at 11:16 AM, Stefano Maffulli
> <stefano@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > On Tue, 2011-11-29 at 10:10 -0800, Lloyd Dewolf wrote:
> >> Where do I find this previous discussion?
> >
> > around here:
> > https://lists.launchpad.net/openstack/msg02169.html
> >
> > What do you think of the requirements we're gathering for the Q&A
> > system? I'd like your opinion on that as we move on.
>
> Thanks Stefano. I really like everyone reframing the discussion to
> figure out what our needs are as opposed to ... shiny!
>
> I do think stackexchange (SE) is miles [1] ahead and the only system
> that will meet the majority of our requirements.
>
> If we can get our own Area51 then it's by far the best immediate solution.
>
> I spoke to a friend at Area51, and he suggested we might have
> different results if we tried again. So I feel like this is on the
> table if we want to pursue.
>
>
> Of course, having very active SE participants (high reputation) put
> the proposal forward and committing to it carries a lot of weight.
>
> My reputation [2] is weak today, but I'm sure myself and others could
> ramp up the levels quickly over the next few months.
>
> Cheers,
> Lloyd
>
> --
> 1. See I'm getting used to United States customary units,
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Customary_units
> 2. http://stackexchange.com/users/25765?tab=accounts
>
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