openstack team mailing list archive

[Vishvananda Ishaya <vishvananda@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Feb 6, 2012, at 6:37 PM, Jesse Andrews wrote:

> 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.

They were the basis of dan and matt's cookbooks, but they are now ancient history.  i've been using them as a repository for a few helper devstack recipes, but waldon pulled those out into a separate repo so it is fine if we torch them.


> 
> 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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