openstack team mailing list archive

[Jesse Andrews <anotherjesse@xxxxxxxxx>]

I know that the RCB deploy team works with the Crowbar team on chef
recipes for that project.

Regarding the github.com/ansolabs & github.com/rcb recipes - I'll have
to delegate to Vishy who worked on those.

Jesse

On Mon, Feb 6, 2012 at 6:07 PM, Jay Pipes <jaypipes@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Hi Stackers,
>
> tl;dr
> -----
>
> There are myriad Chef cookbooks "out there" in the ecosystem and locked up
> behind various company firewalls. It would be awesome if we could agree to:
>
> * Align to a single origin repository for OpenStack cookbooks
> * Consolidate OpenStack Chef-based deployment experience into a single
> knowledge base
> * Have branches on the origin OpenStack cookbooks repository that align with
> core OpenStack projects
> * Automate the validation and testing of these cookbooks on multiple
> supported versions of the OpenStack code base
>
> Details
> -------
>
> Current State of Forks
> ======================
>
> Matt Ray and I tried to outline the current state of the various OpenStack
> Chef cookbooks this past Thursday, and we came up with the following state
> of affairs:
>
> ** The "official" OpenStack Chef cookbooks **
>
> https://github.com/openstack/openstack-chef
>
> These chef cookbooks are the ones maintained mostly by Dan Prince and Brian
> Lamar and these are the cookbooks used by the SmokeStack project. The
> cookbooks contained in the above repo can install all the core OpenStack
> projects with the exception of Swift and Horizon.
>
> This repo is controlled by the Gerrit instance at review.openstack.org just
> like other core OpenStack projects.
>
> However, these cookbooks DO NOT currently have a stable/diablo branch --
> they are updated when the development trunks of any OpenStack project merges
> a commit that requires deployment or configuration-related changes to their
> associated cookbook.
>
> Important note: it's easy for Dan and Brian to know when updates to these
> cookbooks are necessary -- SmokeStack will bomb out if a
> deployment-affecting configuration change hits a core project trunk :)
>
> These cookbooks are the ONLY cookbooks that contain stuff for deploying with
> XenServer, AFAICT.
>
> ** NTT PF Lab Diablo Chef cookbooks **
>
> https://github.com/ntt-pf-lab/openstack-chef/
>
> So, NTT PF Lab forked the upstream Chef cookbooks back in Nov 11, 2011,
> because they needed a set of Chef cookbooks for OpenStack that functioned
> for the Diablo code base.
>
> While Nov 11, 2011, is not the *exact* date of the Diablo release, these
> cookbooks do in fact work for a Diablo install -- Nati Ueno is using them
> for the FreeCloud deployment so we know they work...
>
> ** OpsCode OpenStack Chef Cookbooks **
>
> Matt Ray from OpsCode created a set of cookbooks for OpenStack for the
> Cactus release of OpenStack:
>
> https://github.com/mattray/openstack-cookbooks
> http://wiki.opscode.com/display/chef/Deploying+OpenStack+with+Chef
>
> These cookbooks were forked from the Anso Labs' original OpenStack cookbooks
> from the Bexar release and were the basis for the Chef work that Dell did
> for Crowbar. Crowbar was originally based on Cactus, and according to Matt,
> the repositories of OpenStack cookbooks that OpsCode houses internally and
> uses most often are Cactus-based cookbooks. (Matt, please correct me if I am
> wrong here...)
>
> ** Rackspace CloudBuilders OpenStack Chef Cookbooks **
>
> The RCB team also has a repository of OpenStack Chef cookbooks:
>
> https://github.com/cloudbuilders/openstack-cookbooks
>
> Now, GitHub *says* that these cookbooks were forked from the official
> upstream cookbooks, but I do not think that is correct. Looking at this
> repo, I believe that this repo was *actually* forked from the Anso Labs
> OpenStack Chef Cookbooks, as the list of cookbooks is virtually identical.
>
> ** Anso Labs OpenStack Chef Cookbooks **
>
> These older cookbooks are in this repo:
>
> https://github.com/ansolabs/openstack-cookbooks/tree/master/cookbooks
>
> Interestingly, this repo DOES contain a cookbook for Swift.
>
> Current State of Documentation
> ==============================
>
> Documentation for best practices on using Chef for your OpenStack
> deployments is, well, a bit scattered. Matt Ray has some good information on
> the README on his cookbook repo and the OpsCode wiki:
>
> https://github.com/mattray/openstack-cookbooks/blob/cactus/README.md
> http://wiki.opscode.com/display/chef/Deploying+OpenStack+with+Chef
>
> But it is unfortunately not going to help people looking to deploy Diablo
> and later versions of OpenStack.
>
> Most of the other repos contain virtually no documentation on using the
> cookbooks or how they are written.
>
> I have a suspicion that one of the reasons that there has been such a
> proliferation of cookbooks has been the lack of documentation pointing
> people to an appropriate repo, how to use the cookbooks properly, and what
> the best practices for deployment are. That, and the fact that folks are
> just trying to stand up complex clouds and Get Things Done, and
> documentation is annoying to write ;)
>
> Proposal for Alignment
> ======================
>
> I think the following steps would be good to get done by the time Essex
> rolls out the door in April:
>
> 1) Create a stable/diablo branch of the openstack/openstack-chef cookbook
> repo and maintain it in the same way that we maintain stable branches for
> core OpenStack projects. I propose we use the branch point that NTT PF Lab
> used to create their fork of the upstream repo.
>
> 2) Work with Matt Ray and other Chef experts to combine any and all best
> practices that may be contained in the non-official cookbook repos into the
> upstream official repository. From a cursory overview, there are some
> differences in how databags are handled, how certs are handled, how certain
> cookbooks are constructed, and of course differences in the actual cookbooks
> in the repos themselves.
>
> 3) Consolidate documentation on how to use the cookbooks, the best practices
> used in constructing the cookbooks, and possibly some videos/tutorials
> walking folks through this critical piece of the OpenStack puzzle.
>
> 4) Create Jenkins builders for stable branch deployment testing. We
> currently test the official development cookbooks by way of SmokeStack gates
> on all core OpenStack projects. Would be great to get the same testing
> automated for non-development branches of the cookbooks.
>
> Thoughts and criticism most welcome, and apologies in advance if I got any
> of the above history wrong. Feel free to correct me!
>
> Best,
> -jay
>
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