I have one follow-up question that popped up into my head. The differences you outlined are clear to me from a the perspective of a user or organization who is setting up a PaaS or IaaS for consumption by some group of users. From a user perspective, who is looking at functionality and what a UI provides, the distinction feels less clear to me. Going from OpenShift to Winged Monkey feels in some respects like simply being granted more control. In other words, as a basic user the OpenShift interface provides a very stream-lined and simplified approach with regards to here is a pre-configured environment that let's me do straight-forward applications really easy. Now, as I move from being a basic user to one that needs more control, or needs a more complex environment I flip the switch over to a Winged Monkey interface where I now have more options presented to me, more control and the tools to handle my more complex setups. However, I can also see it from the reverse standpoint after re-reading Greg's response, where you would use Winged Monkey to test and configure an environment, an application stack to a stable point that you could then bundle and present to users via a PaaS.
Which finally gets me to my question - is there a project goal to achieve both or one direction in particular? -Eric ----- Original Message ----- From: "Hugh Brock" <[email protected]> To: "Greg Blomquist" <[email protected]> Cc: "Eric Helms" <[email protected]>, [email protected] Sent: Monday, October 29, 2012 5:49:35 PM Subject: Re: Winged Monkey On Mon, Oct 29, 2012 at 05:37:48PM -0400, Greg Blomquist wrote: > Thanks for following along, Eric! > > ----- Original Message ----- > > From: "Eric Helms" <[email protected]> > > To: [email protected] > > Sent: Monday, October 29, 2012 3:28:46 PM > > Subject: Re: Winged Monkey > > > > > > The question: As a user of Openshift, aspects of the design and the > > feel > > of the UI feel 1-for-1 and in some respects are attempting to meet > > the > > same needs. On which points are there clear divisions between the > > two > > projects? Would I be choosing based on maturity and feature sets down > > the road or is there a clear 'Openshift fills these needs' while > > 'Winged > > Monkey fills these other needs'? > > > > This drives to the heart of the distinction between IaaS and PaaS. > > In the long term (and maybe for certain user classes), this distinction > may become completely blurred. > > However, for the near term (3 years? 5 years? longer?) the distinction is > still visible. With PaaS, a consumer is getting a pre-packaged platform > environment where they can run their specific application (rails, django, > whatever). The tradeoff is the amount of control the consumer will have > with the environment they are allotted. > > With IaaS, the consumer requests a set of resources based on some > specification, and will generally have larger control over those resources > than allowed under PaaS. > > So, whereas OpenShift will supply a user with an environment to run a > Django app, Winged Monkey will supply a user with a resource for testing > out installing and configuring Django from scratch. > > Hope that helps. Lemme know if that doesn't really clear it up. Yeah I just want to reinforce what Greg said here. I think (based on my own recent personal experience with this) that it will be a long time before most people are willing to hand over the keys to their production apps to the extent you have to do with a PaaS solution. I'm talking about tight control over software versions, network configuration, instance sizing, and so on -- all stuff you take for granted with IaaS, but that PaaS deliberately obscures from you. This doesn't mean PaaS isn't useful, far far from it. But I think there are always going to be people who want root on all their VMs, and those people are going to want a solid management tool that makes managing them easy across platforms. This is what we're banking on with Winged Monkey. Take care, --Hugh -- == Hugh Brock, [email protected] == == Engineering Manager, Cloud BU == == Aeolus Project: Manage virtual infrastructure across clouds. == == http://aeolusproject.org == "I know that you believe you understand what you think I said, but I’m not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant." --Robert McCloskey
