Re: Miami CCC '17 Roundtable/Hackathon Summary

[Rafael Weingärtner]

Hahaha, yes I know ;)
And now you can see why I started that discussion to use a standard to
describe applications clusters, instead of an ad-hoc solution.

The idea is to kill two rabbits with a single shot (or at least one and a
half).

On Tue, May 30, 2017 at 2:28 AM, Daan Hoogland 
wrote:

> At the moment I am looking at CAMP, used by Apache Brooklyn, to see if it
> makes sense to embed a Brooklyn engine in ACS. There is an extension to
> Brooklyn for TOSCA for comparison but I’d like to keep it as simple as
> possible and hence use CAMP. (as you know Rafael ;)
>
> On 29/05/2017, 23:17, "Rafael Weingärtner" 
> wrote:
>
> On this idea of Rene to easily provide ways for vendors to integrate
> solutions; if we had an endpoint that receives a blueprint for VM(s)
> described in some language (let’s say TOSCA) we might be able to
> achieve
> that without needing to add tons of code to ACS. Appliances could be
> described in this language and would be easily introduced into ACS
> (pluggable appliances?); then there is the matter of creating
> customization
> endpoints for the deployed appliance, so administrators can configure
> it.
> We also would need to improve further the internals of ACS to provide
> better extension points for anyone that wants to extend/enhance its
> core
> features.
>
> I also agree with everything discussed so far that even if we
> modularize
> the VR, we need to do so in a transparent way for the
> operators/administrators that are already used to the ACS way of doing
> cloud.
>
> On Mon, May 29, 2017 at 8:46 AM, Rene Moser 
> wrote:
>
> > Hi
> >
> > On 05/23/2017 02:16 PM, Simon Weller wrote:
> >
> > > We floated some ideas related to short term VR fixes in order to
> make it
> > more modular, as well as API driven, rather than the currently SSH
> JSON
> > injections.
> >
> > Speaking about endless possibilities... ;)
> >
> > I support the initiative (+1) to make the routing more API driven and
> > modular, the issue I see with a "too hard backed" appliance is the
> > integration into the existing environment.
> >
> > One big benefit of the VR is that we can relatively easy customize
> it.
> >
> > I had some thoughts about how to integrate a standardized "custom
> > configuration" mechanism to the VR.
> >
> > I like the idea to have a "user data" or "cloud init" for the VR on
> the
> > network offerings level. This would allow any virtual appliance
> "vendor"
> > to implement a simple interface (e.g. static yaml/json data) which
> > allows the "cloudstack admin" to customize the virtual appliance in
> the
> > network offerings API.
> >
> > E.g. for our VR, the "cloud init" interface would allow
> >
> > * to install and configure custom monitoring solution
> > * configure the automated update mechanism
> > * add web hooks to trigger what so ever
> > * install and run cfgmgmt like puppet/ansible-pull
> > * etc.
> >
> > So for any virtual appliance the interfaces would be the same but the
> > config option would differ based on features they provide.
> >
> > Regards
> > René
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Rafael Weingärtner
>
>
>
> daan.hoogl...@shapeblue.com
> www.shapeblue.com
> 53 Chandos Place, Covent Garden, London  WC2N 4HSUK
> @shapeblue
>
>
>
>


-- 
Rafael Weingärtner

Re: Miami CCC '17 Roundtable/Hackathon Summary

[Daan Hoogland]

At the moment I am looking at CAMP, used by Apache Brooklyn, to see if it makes 
sense to embed a Brooklyn engine in ACS. There is an extension to Brooklyn for 
TOSCA for comparison but I’d like to keep it as simple as possible and hence 
use CAMP. (as you know Rafael ;)

On 29/05/2017, 23:17, "Rafael Weingärtner"  wrote:

On this idea of Rene to easily provide ways for vendors to integrate
solutions; if we had an endpoint that receives a blueprint for VM(s)
described in some language (let’s say TOSCA) we might be able to achieve
that without needing to add tons of code to ACS. Appliances could be
described in this language and would be easily introduced into ACS
(pluggable appliances?); then there is the matter of creating customization
endpoints for the deployed appliance, so administrators can configure it.
We also would need to improve further the internals of ACS to provide
better extension points for anyone that wants to extend/enhance its core
features.

I also agree with everything discussed so far that even if we modularize
the VR, we need to do so in a transparent way for the
operators/administrators that are already used to the ACS way of doing
cloud.

On Mon, May 29, 2017 at 8:46 AM, Rene Moser  wrote:

> Hi
>
> On 05/23/2017 02:16 PM, Simon Weller wrote:
>
> > We floated some ideas related to short term VR fixes in order to make it
> more modular, as well as API driven, rather than the currently SSH JSON
> injections.
>
> Speaking about endless possibilities... ;)
>
> I support the initiative (+1) to make the routing more API driven and
> modular, the issue I see with a "too hard backed" appliance is the
> integration into the existing environment.
>
> One big benefit of the VR is that we can relatively easy customize it.
>
> I had some thoughts about how to integrate a standardized "custom
> configuration" mechanism to the VR.
>
> I like the idea to have a "user data" or "cloud init" for the VR on the
> network offerings level. This would allow any virtual appliance "vendor"
> to implement a simple interface (e.g. static yaml/json data) which
> allows the "cloudstack admin" to customize the virtual appliance in the
> network offerings API.
>
> E.g. for our VR, the "cloud init" interface would allow
>
> * to install and configure custom monitoring solution
> * configure the automated update mechanism
> * add web hooks to trigger what so ever
> * install and run cfgmgmt like puppet/ansible-pull
> * etc.
>
> So for any virtual appliance the interfaces would be the same but the
> config option would differ based on features they provide.
>
> Regards
> René
>



-- 
Rafael Weingärtner



daan.hoogl...@shapeblue.com 
www.shapeblue.com
53 Chandos Place, Covent Garden, London  WC2N 4HSUK
@shapeblue
  
 

Re: Miami CCC '17 Roundtable/Hackathon Summary

[Rafael Weingärtner]

On this idea of Rene to easily provide ways for vendors to integrate
solutions; if we had an endpoint that receives a blueprint for VM(s)
described in some language (let’s say TOSCA) we might be able to achieve
that without needing to add tons of code to ACS. Appliances could be
described in this language and would be easily introduced into ACS
(pluggable appliances?); then there is the matter of creating customization
endpoints for the deployed appliance, so administrators can configure it.
We also would need to improve further the internals of ACS to provide
better extension points for anyone that wants to extend/enhance its core
features.

I also agree with everything discussed so far that even if we modularize
the VR, we need to do so in a transparent way for the
operators/administrators that are already used to the ACS way of doing
cloud.

On Mon, May 29, 2017 at 8:46 AM, Rene Moser  wrote:

> Hi
>
> On 05/23/2017 02:16 PM, Simon Weller wrote:
>
> > We floated some ideas related to short term VR fixes in order to make it
> more modular, as well as API driven, rather than the currently SSH JSON
> injections.
>
> Speaking about endless possibilities... ;)
>
> I support the initiative (+1) to make the routing more API driven and
> modular, the issue I see with a "too hard backed" appliance is the
> integration into the existing environment.
>
> One big benefit of the VR is that we can relatively easy customize it.
>
> I had some thoughts about how to integrate a standardized "custom
> configuration" mechanism to the VR.
>
> I like the idea to have a "user data" or "cloud init" for the VR on the
> network offerings level. This would allow any virtual appliance "vendor"
> to implement a simple interface (e.g. static yaml/json data) which
> allows the "cloudstack admin" to customize the virtual appliance in the
> network offerings API.
>
> E.g. for our VR, the "cloud init" interface would allow
>
> * to install and configure custom monitoring solution
> * configure the automated update mechanism
> * add web hooks to trigger what so ever
> * install and run cfgmgmt like puppet/ansible-pull
> * etc.
>
> So for any virtual appliance the interfaces would be the same but the
> config option would differ based on features they provide.
>
> Regards
> René
>



-- 
Rafael Weingärtner

Re: Miami CCC '17 Roundtable/Hackathon Summary

[Rene Moser]

Hi

On 05/23/2017 02:16 PM, Simon Weller wrote:

> We floated some ideas related to short term VR fixes in order to make it more 
> modular, as well as API driven, rather than the currently SSH JSON injections.

Speaking about endless possibilities... ;)

I support the initiative (+1) to make the routing more API driven and
modular, the issue I see with a "too hard backed" appliance is the
integration into the existing environment.

One big benefit of the VR is that we can relatively easy customize it.

I had some thoughts about how to integrate a standardized "custom
configuration" mechanism to the VR.

I like the idea to have a "user data" or "cloud init" for the VR on the
network offerings level. This would allow any virtual appliance "vendor"
to implement a simple interface (e.g. static yaml/json data) which
allows the "cloudstack admin" to customize the virtual appliance in the
network offerings API.

E.g. for our VR, the "cloud init" interface would allow

* to install and configure custom monitoring solution
* configure the automated update mechanism
* add web hooks to trigger what so ever
* install and run cfgmgmt like puppet/ansible-pull
* etc.

So for any virtual appliance the interfaces would be the same but the
config option would differ based on features they provide.

Regards
René

Re: Miami CCC '17 Roundtable/Hackathon Summary

[Daan Hoogland]

ntric 
Usability.
>  
>  If I rambled a little here I apologize, its 11:30pm and sometimes I 
get ahead of myself (especially when I write something like this at this hour) 
when writing about something I am passionate about and I am passionate about 
getting more exposure and adoption of ACS.
>  
>  Thank you for listening guys.. Sorry for the ramble.
>  
>  Regards,
>  Marty Godsey
>  Principal Engineer
>  nSource Solutions, LLC
>  
>  -Original Message-
>  From: Rafael Weingärtner [mailto:rafaelweingart...@gmail.com]
>  Sent: Tuesday, May 23, 2017 11:18 AM
>  To: dev@cloudstack.apache.org
>  Subject: Re: Miami CCC '17 Roundtable/Hackathon Summary
>  
>  I missed the roundtable and hackathon, my bad guys :(
>  
>  I liked the ideas that you (all) put forward. The VR is interesting 
and a nice feature to have, but it causes some pain to maintain in our 
development cycles. The idea to split the current VR into NFV is great; this 
can make things more pluggable and take ACS to NFV (officially). We could 
develop a framework in ACS (an API method?) that creates a system VM called NFV 
where people (vendors, enthusiast, users and others) can then extend and add 
their functions/systems there. The problem is the work required to design and 
develop such thing.
>  
>  I use Daan`s words here, this is a community effort and not a single 
company or individual. What do you guys think? We could start creating a 
roadmap of when we want this feature (milestones for delivering piece by piece 
of the complete feature), then the draft of a proposal, and later define the 
implementation job, so people of the community can embrace it.
>  
>  On Tue, May 23, 2017 at 10:18 AM, Daan Hoogland 
<daan.hoogl...@shapeblue.com
>  > wrote:
>  
>  > Great thanks Simon,
>  >
>  > Just want to play bingo a bit; dividing the VR into VNFs (virtual
>  > network
>  > functions) was mentioned. This pertains to the mention of making 
the
>  > VR more modular ;)
>  >
>  > Hopefully everybody is inspired by this because no one company or
>  > person is going to make this happen.
>  >
>  > Dahn
>  >
>  > On 23/05/17 14:16, "Simon Weller" <swel...@ena.com.INVALID> wrote:
>  >
>  > Hi everyone,
>  >
>  >
>  > During the CCC last week in Miami, we held a 
roundtable/hackathon
>  > to discuss some of the major areas the community would like to 
focus
>  > more attention.
>  >
>  >
>  > The discussions were passionate and were mainly focused around
>  > networking and our current use of our home-spun Virtual Router.
>  >
>  >
>  > For most of the us, the VR has become a challenging beast, 
mainly
>  > due to how difficult it is to end-to-end test for new releases.
>  >
>  > Quite often PRs are pushed that fix an issue on one feature 
set,
>  > but break another unintentionally. This has a great deal to do with
>  > how inter-mingled all the features are currently.
>  >
>  >
>  > We floated some ideas related to short term VR fixes in order 
to
>  > make it more modular, as well as API driven, rather than the 
currently
>  > SSH JSON injections.
>  >
>  > A number of possible alternatives were also brought up to see 
what
>  > VR feature coverage could be handled by other virtual appliances
>  > currently out on the market.
>  >
>  >
>  > These included (but not limited to):
>  >
>  >
>  > VyOS (current PR out there for integration via a plugin – 
thanks
>  > Matthew!)
>  >
>  > Microtek (Commerical)
>  >
>  > Openswitch/Flexswitch
>  >
>  > Cloud Router
>  >
>  >
>  > The second major topic of the day was related to how we want to
>  > integrate networking moving forward.
>  >
>  >
>  > A fair number of individuals felt that we shouldn't be 
focusing so
>  > much on integrating network functions, but relying on other network

Re: Miami CCC '17 Roundtable/Hackathon Summary

[Matthew Smart]

 the larger 
companies that use ACS in a more complex environment.  I think for ACS to stay 
relevant and compete against the likes of OpenStack we will need features like 
NFV and a VR that is consistent and stable.  Oh and we also need IPv6 (That was 
for you Wido ;) ).

I agree with Paul that we might want to create a dedicated channel or have 
weekly meetings to begin really pushing this major feature forward with the 
community, sooner rather than later.  It is easy for us to lose momentum on 
monumental tasks such as this.

In short, one of the great features of ACS is that it provides *choice*.  What 
is important, to Marty’s point, is that we don’t lose sight of usability and 
ease of implementation when providing that choice for the wide variety of users 
that we have.

Thanks,
Dave Mabry
Education Networks of America

On 5/23/17, 10:29 PM, "Marty Godsey" <ma...@gonsource.com> wrote:

 Thank you Simon for the re-cap of the hackathon. I was able to catch the 
last couple of hours of it but saw the notes on the boards..
 
 I am going to give my thoughts on this coming from a slightly different angle. As many of you know, I am not a coder. I am an Systems/Network Engineer. I know many times design decisions are made based upon the amount of time it will require to write a particular piece of code, update, fix bugs, etc. But the one thing we can't forget is that many ACS users may not have the ability to add their own plugins, write code to interact with a router, etc. I know I can't myself, going back to the I'm not a coder, but thankfully I know people that can and can get it done if need be but the point is many people cannot. As we decide how we are going to re-write the networking portions of ACS we have to step back and take a look at what was one of the most talked about topics at this year's CCC. I am not talking about the networking, IPV6 support or any other cool idea we had. The constant conversation in the hallways and at the many "Zest" outings was ADOPTION and MARKET AWARENESS.
 
 Adoption.. How do we get the word out and get it adopted by more people? It’s a tough question but something that also has to influence how we build ACS. Let take a moment and compare ACS to its closest competitor Openstack. We all know that Openstack has the market share, it has the money behind it. But what is the constant complaint we hear from people who use? ""Yea, it works but man,, it was a bi%#h to get going""  Openstack has gotten its adoption cause it had big names and a lot of money behind it. Openstacks complexity has also caused it to not be adopted in many cases. Your typical IT shop in a small to medium sized business does not have the expertise to implement something like this. And when I say SMB I am saying organizations from 10-500 people.
 
 So back to my adoption question. As mentioned before one of the reasons many people come to ACS is the fact that it has it all. Networking, hyper-visor management, user management, storage management, its multi-tenant. What will drive ACS adoption will be improving what ACS already does, not making it more like OpenStack. Now do I think that having a module service or plugin service to provide a framework to allow for external resources to be used by ACS is a good thing? Yes I do. But I also do not want to, and hope we don’t, move away from what made ACS what it is today. A software that allows companies to easily spin up new public or private clouds. Adoption-Centric Usability.
 
 If I rambled a little here I apologize, its 11:30pm and sometimes I get ahead of myself (especially when I write something like this at this hour) when writing about something I am passionate about and I am passionate about getting more exposure and adoption of ACS.
 
 Thank you for listening guys.. Sorry for the ramble.
 
 Regards,

 Marty Godsey
 Principal Engineer
 nSource Solutions, LLC
 
 -Original Message-

 From: Rafael Weingärtner [mailto:rafaelweingart...@gmail.com]
 Sent: Tuesday, May 23, 2017 11:18 AM
 To: dev@cloudstack.apache.org
 Subject: Re: Miami CCC '17 Roundtable/Hackathon Summary
 
 I missed the roundtable and hackathon, my bad guys :(
 
 I liked the ideas that you (all) put forward. The VR is interesting and a nice feature to have, but it causes some pain to maintain in our development cycles. The idea to split the current VR into NFV is great; this can make things more pluggable and take ACS to NFV (officially). We could develop a framework in ACS (an API method?) that creates a system VM called NFV where people (vendors, enthusiast, users and others) can then extend and add their functions/systems there. The problem is the work required to design and develop such thing.
 
 I use Daan`s words here, this is a community effort and not a single company or individual. What do you guys think? We 

Re: Miami CCC '17 Roundtable/Hackathon Summary

[David Mabry]

rom: Rafael Weingärtner [mailto:rafaelweingart...@gmail.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, May 23, 2017 11:18 AM
To: dev@cloudstack.apache.org
Subject: Re: Miami CCC '17 Roundtable/Hackathon Summary

I missed the roundtable and hackathon, my bad guys :(

I liked the ideas that you (all) put forward. The VR is interesting and a 
nice feature to have, but it causes some pain to maintain in our development 
cycles. The idea to split the current VR into NFV is great; this can make 
things more pluggable and take ACS to NFV (officially). We could develop a 
framework in ACS (an API method?) that creates a system VM called NFV where 
people (vendors, enthusiast, users and others) can then extend and add their 
functions/systems there. The problem is the work required to design and develop 
such thing.

I use Daan`s words here, this is a community effort and not a single 
company or individual. What do you guys think? We could start creating a 
roadmap of when we want this feature (milestones for delivering piece by piece 
of the complete feature), then the draft of a proposal, and later define the 
implementation job, so people of the community can embrace it.

On Tue, May 23, 2017 at 10:18 AM, Daan Hoogland <daan.hoogl...@shapeblue.com
> wrote:

> Great thanks Simon,
>
> Just want to play bingo a bit; dividing the VR into VNFs (virtual 
> network
> functions) was mentioned. This pertains to the mention of making the 
> VR more modular ;)
>
> Hopefully everybody is inspired by this because no one company or 
> person is going to make this happen.
>
> Dahn
>
> On 23/05/17 14:16, "Simon Weller" <swel...@ena.com.INVALID> wrote:
>
> Hi everyone,
>
>
> During the CCC last week in Miami, we held a roundtable/hackathon 
> to discuss some of the major areas the community would like to focus 
> more attention.
>
>
> The discussions were passionate and were mainly focused around 
> networking and our current use of our home-spun Virtual Router.
>
>
> For most of the us, the VR has become a challenging beast, mainly 
> due to how difficult it is to end-to-end test for new releases.
>
> Quite often PRs are pushed that fix an issue on one feature set, 
> but break another unintentionally. This has a great deal to do with 
> how inter-mingled all the features are currently.
>
>
> We floated some ideas related to short term VR fixes in order to 
> make it more modular, as well as API driven, rather than the currently 
> SSH JSON injections.
>
> A number of possible alternatives were also brought up to see what 
> VR feature coverage could be handled by other virtual appliances 
> currently out on the market.
>
>
> These included (but not limited to):
>
>
> VyOS (current PR out there for integration via a plugin – thanks
> Matthew!)
>
> Microtek (Commerical)
>
> Openswitch/Flexswitch
>
> Cloud Router
>
>
> The second major topic of the day was related to how we want to 
> integrate networking moving forward.
>
>
> A fair number of individuals felt that we shouldn't be focusing so 
> much on integrating network functions, but relying on other network 
> orchestrators to hand this.
>
> It was also noted that what draws a lot of people to ACS is the 
> fact we have a VR and do provide these functions out of the box.
>
>
> We discussed how we could standardize the network sub system to 
> use some sort of queuing bus to make it easier for others projects to 
> integrate their solutions.
>
> The current plugin implementation is fairly complex and often 
> other projects (or commercial entities) put it into the too hard 
> basket, until someone either does it themselves or is willing to pay for 
the development.
>
> Most also felt it was important to maintain a default network 
> function that works out of the box so that the complexity of a full 
> orchestrator could be avoided if not needed.
>
>
> I'm sure I've missed some key points, so hopefully this starts a 
> discussion with the entire community of where we focused next.
>
>
> Thanks to all those that participated on Tuesday afternoon.
>
>
> - Si
>
>
>
>
> daan.hoogl...@shapeblue.com
> www.shapeblue.com
> 53 Chandos Place, Covent Garden, London  WC2N 4HSUK @shapeblue
>
>
>
>


-- 
Rafael Weingärtner

RE: Miami CCC '17 Roundtable/Hackathon Summary

[Paul Angus]

Rather than trying to re-write my presentation at CCC17 here, have a look at 
the slides here:  https://www.slideshare.net/ShapeBlue/ccna17-cloudstack-and-nfv

Before we can separate out the VR into VNFs, we need to be able to connect VNFs 
together logically in a useful manner.  A firewall VM will need to pass traffic 
to a discreet VPN VM and a discreet loadbalancer.  CloudStack doesn't allow for 
that kind of plumbing currently. And to be honest, CloudStack intelligently 
provisioning and them and configuring them on its own will be no mean feat 
either.

I'm a big fan of VyOS - in that I used Vyatta Core quite a bit before it was 
shutdown by Brocade.  So I'm going to have a look at that PR.

A 'drop in' replacement for the home-brew VR seems to be the easiest path. 

A guy in my presentation from the incubating Apache Project ARIA TOSCA 
http://ariatosca.org/about/  - suggested that we should be looking to TOSCA to 
provide our 'definitions' and blueprints.  Which is actually quite a sensible 
approach.

I think this thread could run for a while yet

We should probably try to have a dedicated 'channel' or bi-weekly 'conf calls' 
to make real progress


Kind regards,

Paul Angus

paul.an...@shapeblue.com 
www.shapeblue.com
53 Chandos Place, Covent Garden, London  WC2N 4HSUK
@shapeblue
  
 


-Original Message-
From: Rafael Weingärtner [mailto:rafaelweingart...@gmail.com] 
Sent: 23 May 2017 16:18
To: dev@cloudstack.apache.org
Subject: Re: Miami CCC '17 Roundtable/Hackathon Summary

I missed the roundtable and hackathon, my bad guys :(

I liked the ideas that you (all) put forward. The VR is interesting and a nice 
feature to have, but it causes some pain to maintain in our development cycles. 
The idea to split the current VR into NFV is great; this can make things more 
pluggable and take ACS to NFV (officially). We could develop a framework in ACS 
(an API method?) that creates a system VM called NFV where people (vendors, 
enthusiast, users and others) can then extend and add their functions/systems 
there. The problem is the work required to design and develop such thing.

I use Daan`s words here, this is a community effort and not a single company or 
individual. What do you guys think? We could start creating a roadmap of when 
we want this feature (milestones for delivering piece by piece of the complete 
feature), then the draft of a proposal, and later define the implementation 
job, so people of the community can embrace it.

On Tue, May 23, 2017 at 10:18 AM, Daan Hoogland <daan.hoogl...@shapeblue.com
> wrote:

> Great thanks Simon,
>
> Just want to play bingo a bit; dividing the VR into VNFs (virtual 
> network
> functions) was mentioned. This pertains to the mention of making the 
> VR more modular ;)
>
> Hopefully everybody is inspired by this because no one company or 
> person is going to make this happen.
>
> Dahn
>
> On 23/05/17 14:16, "Simon Weller" <swel...@ena.com.INVALID> wrote:
>
> Hi everyone,
>
>
> During the CCC last week in Miami, we held a roundtable/hackathon 
> to discuss some of the major areas the community would like to focus 
> more attention.
>
>
> The discussions were passionate and were mainly focused around 
> networking and our current use of our home-spun Virtual Router.
>
>
> For most of the us, the VR has become a challenging beast, mainly 
> due to how difficult it is to end-to-end test for new releases.
>
> Quite often PRs are pushed that fix an issue on one feature set, 
> but break another unintentionally. This has a great deal to do with 
> how inter-mingled all the features are currently.
>
>
> We floated some ideas related to short term VR fixes in order to 
> make it more modular, as well as API driven, rather than the currently 
> SSH JSON injections.
>
> A number of possible alternatives were also brought up to see what 
> VR feature coverage could be handled by other virtual appliances 
> currently out on the market.
>
>
> These included (but not limited to):
>
>
> VyOS (current PR out there for integration via a plugin – thanks
> Matthew!)
>
> Microtek (Commerical)
>
> Openswitch/Flexswitch
>
> Cloud Router
>
>
> The second major topic of the day was related to how we want to 
> integrate networking moving forward.
>
>
> A fair number of individuals felt that we shouldn't be focusing so 
> much on integrating network functions, but relying on other network 
> orchestrators to hand this.
>
> It was also noted that what draws a lot of people to ACS is the 
> fact we have a VR and do provide these functions out of the box.
>
>
> We discussed how we could standardize the network sub system to 
> use some sort of queuing bus to make it ea

Re: Miami CCC '17 Roundtable/Hackathon Summary

[Ron Wheeler]

+1
To find out if it is too complex to be worth doing, try writing the docs 
for it and see if system managers can actually read it and tell you how 
it works and what it is good for.
If they can not, you can save a lot of coding and make adoption more 
likely by not doing it.


On 23/05/2017 11:29 PM, Marty Godsey wrote:

Thank you Simon for the re-cap of the hackathon. I was able to catch the last 
couple of hours of it but saw the notes on the boards..

I am going to give my thoughts on this coming from a slightly different angle. As many of 
you know, I am not a coder. I am an Systems/Network Engineer. I know many times design 
decisions are made based upon the amount of time it will require to write a particular 
piece of code, update, fix bugs, etc. But the one thing we can't forget is that many ACS 
users may not have the ability to add their own plugins, write code to interact with a 
router, etc. I know I can't myself, going back to the I'm not a coder, but thankfully I 
know people that can and can get it done if need be but the point is many people cannot. 
As we decide how we are going to re-write the networking portions of ACS we have to step 
back and take a look at what was one of the most talked about topics at this year's CCC. 
I am not talking about the networking, IPV6 support or any other cool idea we had. The 
constant conversation in the hallways and at the many "Zest" outings was 
ADOPTION and MARKET AWARENESS.

Adoption.. How do we get the word out and get it adopted by more people? It’s a tough question but 
something that also has to influence how we build ACS. Let take a moment and compare ACS to its 
closest competitor Openstack. We all know that Openstack has the market share, it has the money 
behind it. But what is the constant complaint we hear from people who use? ""Yea, it 
works but man,, it was a bi%#h to get going""  Openstack has gotten its adoption cause it 
had big names and a lot of money behind it. Openstacks complexity has also caused it to not be 
adopted in many cases. Your typical IT shop in a small to medium sized business does not have the 
expertise to implement something like this. And when I say SMB I am saying organizations from 
10-500 people.

So back to my adoption question. As mentioned before one of the reasons many 
people come to ACS is the fact that it has it all. Networking, hyper-visor 
management, user management, storage management, its multi-tenant. What will 
drive ACS adoption will be improving what ACS already does, not making it more 
like OpenStack. Now do I think that having a module service or plugin service 
to provide a framework to allow for external resources to be used by ACS is a 
good thing? Yes I do. But I also do not want to, and hope we don’t, move away 
from what made ACS what it is today. A software that allows companies to easily 
spin up new public or private clouds. Adoption-Centric Usability.

If I rambled a little here I apologize, its 11:30pm and sometimes I get ahead 
of myself (especially when I write something like this at this hour) when 
writing about something I am passionate about and I am passionate about getting 
more exposure and adoption of ACS.

Thank you for listening guys.. Sorry for the ramble.

Regards,
Marty Godsey
Principal Engineer
nSource Solutions, LLC

-Original Message-
From: Rafael Weingärtner [mailto:rafaelweingart...@gmail.com]
Sent: Tuesday, May 23, 2017 11:18 AM
To: dev@cloudstack.apache.org
Subject: Re: Miami CCC '17 Roundtable/Hackathon Summary

I missed the roundtable and hackathon, my bad guys :(

I liked the ideas that you (all) put forward. The VR is interesting and a nice 
feature to have, but it causes some pain to maintain in our development cycles. 
The idea to split the current VR into NFV is great; this can make things more 
pluggable and take ACS to NFV (officially). We could develop a framework in ACS 
(an API method?) that creates a system VM called NFV where people (vendors, 
enthusiast, users and others) can then extend and add their functions/systems 
there. The problem is the work required to design and develop such thing.

I use Daan`s words here, this is a community effort and not a single company or 
individual. What do you guys think? We could start creating a roadmap of when 
we want this feature (milestones for delivering piece by piece of the complete 
feature), then the draft of a proposal, and later define the implementation 
job, so people of the community can embrace it.

On Tue, May 23, 2017 at 10:18 AM, Daan Hoogland <daan.hoogl...@shapeblue.com

wrote:
Great thanks Simon,

Just want to play bingo a bit; dividing the VR into VNFs (virtual
network
functions) was mentioned. This pertains to the mention of making the
VR more modular ;)

Hopefully everybody is inspired by this because no one company or
person is going to make this happen.

Dahn

On 23/05/17 14:16, "Simon Weller" <swel...@ena.com.INVALID>

RE: Miami CCC '17 Roundtable/Hackathon Summary

[Marty Godsey]

Thank you Simon for the re-cap of the hackathon. I was able to catch the last 
couple of hours of it but saw the notes on the boards..

I am going to give my thoughts on this coming from a slightly different angle. 
As many of you know, I am not a coder. I am an Systems/Network Engineer. I know 
many times design decisions are made based upon the amount of time it will 
require to write a particular piece of code, update, fix bugs, etc. But the one 
thing we can't forget is that many ACS users may not have the ability to add 
their own plugins, write code to interact with a router, etc. I know I can't 
myself, going back to the I'm not a coder, but thankfully I know people that 
can and can get it done if need be but the point is many people cannot. As we 
decide how we are going to re-write the networking portions of ACS we have to 
step back and take a look at what was one of the most talked about topics at 
this year's CCC. I am not talking about the networking, IPV6 support or any 
other cool idea we had. The constant conversation in the hallways and at the 
many "Zest" outings was ADOPTION and MARKET AWARENESS.

Adoption.. How do we get the word out and get it adopted by more people? It’s a 
tough question but something that also has to influence how we build ACS. Let 
take a moment and compare ACS to its closest competitor Openstack. We all know 
that Openstack has the market share, it has the money behind it. But what is 
the constant complaint we hear from people who use? ""Yea, it works but man,, 
it was a bi%#h to get going""  Openstack has gotten its adoption cause it had 
big names and a lot of money behind it. Openstacks complexity has also caused 
it to not be adopted in many cases. Your typical IT shop in a small to medium 
sized business does not have the expertise to implement something like this. 
And when I say SMB I am saying organizations from 10-500 people.

So back to my adoption question. As mentioned before one of the reasons many 
people come to ACS is the fact that it has it all. Networking, hyper-visor 
management, user management, storage management, its multi-tenant. What will 
drive ACS adoption will be improving what ACS already does, not making it more 
like OpenStack. Now do I think that having a module service or plugin service 
to provide a framework to allow for external resources to be used by ACS is a 
good thing? Yes I do. But I also do not want to, and hope we don’t, move away 
from what made ACS what it is today. A software that allows companies to easily 
spin up new public or private clouds. Adoption-Centric Usability. 

If I rambled a little here I apologize, its 11:30pm and sometimes I get ahead 
of myself (especially when I write something like this at this hour) when 
writing about something I am passionate about and I am passionate about getting 
more exposure and adoption of ACS.

Thank you for listening guys.. Sorry for the ramble.

Regards,
Marty Godsey
Principal Engineer
nSource Solutions, LLC

-Original Message-
From: Rafael Weingärtner [mailto:rafaelweingart...@gmail.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, May 23, 2017 11:18 AM
To: dev@cloudstack.apache.org
Subject: Re: Miami CCC '17 Roundtable/Hackathon Summary

I missed the roundtable and hackathon, my bad guys :(

I liked the ideas that you (all) put forward. The VR is interesting and a nice 
feature to have, but it causes some pain to maintain in our development cycles. 
The idea to split the current VR into NFV is great; this can make things more 
pluggable and take ACS to NFV (officially). We could develop a framework in ACS 
(an API method?) that creates a system VM called NFV where people (vendors, 
enthusiast, users and others) can then extend and add their functions/systems 
there. The problem is the work required to design and develop such thing.

I use Daan`s words here, this is a community effort and not a single company or 
individual. What do you guys think? We could start creating a roadmap of when 
we want this feature (milestones for delivering piece by piece of the complete 
feature), then the draft of a proposal, and later define the implementation 
job, so people of the community can embrace it.

On Tue, May 23, 2017 at 10:18 AM, Daan Hoogland <daan.hoogl...@shapeblue.com
> wrote:

> Great thanks Simon,
>
> Just want to play bingo a bit; dividing the VR into VNFs (virtual 
> network
> functions) was mentioned. This pertains to the mention of making the 
> VR more modular ;)
>
> Hopefully everybody is inspired by this because no one company or 
> person is going to make this happen.
>
> Dahn
>
> On 23/05/17 14:16, "Simon Weller" <swel...@ena.com.INVALID> wrote:
>
> Hi everyone,
>
>
> During the CCC last week in Miami, we held a roundtable/hackathon 
> to discuss some of the major areas the community would like to focus 
> more attention.
>
>
> The dis

Re: Miami CCC '17 Roundtable/Hackathon Summary

[Rafael Weingärtner]

I missed the roundtable and hackathon, my bad guys :(

I liked the ideas that you (all) put forward. The VR is interesting and a
nice feature to have, but it causes some pain to maintain in our
development cycles. The idea to split the current VR into NFV is great;
this can make things more pluggable and take ACS to NFV (officially). We
could develop a framework in ACS (an API method?) that creates a system VM
called NFV where people (vendors, enthusiast, users and others) can then
extend and add their functions/systems there. The problem is the work
required to design and develop such thing.

I use Daan`s words here, this is a community effort and not a single
company or individual. What do you guys think? We could start creating a
roadmap of when we want this feature (milestones for delivering piece by
piece of the complete feature), then the draft of a proposal, and later
define the implementation job, so people of the community can embrace it.

On Tue, May 23, 2017 at 10:18 AM, Daan Hoogland  wrote:

> Great thanks Simon,
>
> Just want to play bingo a bit; dividing the VR into VNFs (virtual network
> functions) was mentioned. This pertains to the mention of making the VR
> more modular ;)
>
> Hopefully everybody is inspired by this because no one company or person
> is going to make this happen.
>
> Dahn
>
> On 23/05/17 14:16, "Simon Weller"  wrote:
>
> Hi everyone,
>
>
> During the CCC last week in Miami, we held a roundtable/hackathon to
> discuss some of the major areas the community would like to focus more
> attention.
>
>
> The discussions were passionate and were mainly focused around
> networking and our current use of our home-spun Virtual Router.
>
>
> For most of the us, the VR has become a challenging beast, mainly due
> to how difficult it is to end-to-end test for new releases.
>
> Quite often PRs are pushed that fix an issue on one feature set, but
> break another unintentionally. This has a great deal to do with how
> inter-mingled all the features are currently.
>
>
> We floated some ideas related to short term VR fixes in order to make
> it more modular, as well as API driven, rather than the currently SSH JSON
> injections.
>
> A number of possible alternatives were also brought up to see what VR
> feature coverage could be handled by other virtual appliances currently out
> on the market.
>
>
> These included (but not limited to):
>
>
> VyOS (current PR out there for integration via a plugin – thanks
> Matthew!)
>
> Microtek (Commerical)
>
> Openswitch/Flexswitch
>
> Cloud Router
>
>
> The second major topic of the day was related to how we want to
> integrate networking moving forward.
>
>
> A fair number of individuals felt that we shouldn't be focusing so
> much on integrating network functions, but relying on other network
> orchestrators to hand this.
>
> It was also noted that what draws a lot of people to ACS is the fact
> we have a VR and do provide these functions out of the box.
>
>
> We discussed how we could standardize the network sub system to use
> some sort of queuing bus to make it easier for others projects to integrate
> their solutions.
>
> The current plugin implementation is fairly complex and often other
> projects (or commercial entities) put it into the too hard basket, until
> someone either does it themselves or is willing to pay for the development.
>
> Most also felt it was important to maintain a default network function
> that works out of the box so that the complexity of a full orchestrator
> could be avoided if not needed.
>
>
> I'm sure I've missed some key points, so hopefully this starts a
> discussion with the entire community of where we focused next.
>
>
> Thanks to all those that participated on Tuesday afternoon.
>
>
> - Si
>
>
>
>
> daan.hoogl...@shapeblue.com
> www.shapeblue.com
> 53 Chandos Place, Covent Garden, London  WC2N 4HSUK
> @shapeblue
>
>
>
>


-- 
Rafael Weingärtner

Re: Miami CCC '17 Roundtable/Hackathon Summary

[Daan Hoogland]

Great thanks Simon,

Just want to play bingo a bit; dividing the VR into VNFs (virtual network 
functions) was mentioned. This pertains to the mention of making the VR more 
modular ;)

Hopefully everybody is inspired by this because no one company or person is 
going to make this happen.

Dahn

On 23/05/17 14:16, "Simon Weller"  wrote:

Hi everyone,


During the CCC last week in Miami, we held a roundtable/hackathon to 
discuss some of the major areas the community would like to focus more 
attention.


The discussions were passionate and were mainly focused around networking 
and our current use of our home-spun Virtual Router.


For most of the us, the VR has become a challenging beast, mainly due to 
how difficult it is to end-to-end test for new releases.

Quite often PRs are pushed that fix an issue on one feature set, but break 
another unintentionally. This has a great deal to do with how inter-mingled all 
the features are currently.


We floated some ideas related to short term VR fixes in order to make it 
more modular, as well as API driven, rather than the currently SSH JSON 
injections.

A number of possible alternatives were also brought up to see what VR 
feature coverage could be handled by other virtual appliances currently out on 
the market.


These included (but not limited to):


VyOS (current PR out there for integration via a plugin – thanks Matthew!)

Microtek (Commerical)

Openswitch/Flexswitch

Cloud Router


The second major topic of the day was related to how we want to integrate 
networking moving forward.


A fair number of individuals felt that we shouldn't be focusing so much on 
integrating network functions, but relying on other network orchestrators to 
hand this.

It was also noted that what draws a lot of people to ACS is the fact we 
have a VR and do provide these functions out of the box.


We discussed how we could standardize the network sub system to use some 
sort of queuing bus to make it easier for others projects to integrate their 
solutions.

The current plugin implementation is fairly complex and often other 
projects (or commercial entities) put it into the too hard basket, until 
someone either does it themselves or is willing to pay for the development.

Most also felt it was important to maintain a default network function that 
works out of the box so that the complexity of a full orchestrator could be 
avoided if not needed.


I'm sure I've missed some key points, so hopefully this starts a discussion 
with the entire community of where we focused next.


Thanks to all those that participated on Tuesday afternoon.


- Si




daan.hoogl...@shapeblue.com 
www.shapeblue.com
53 Chandos Place, Covent Garden, London  WC2N 4HSUK
@shapeblue
  
 

Miami CCC '17 Roundtable/Hackathon Summary

[Simon Weller]

Hi everyone,


During the CCC last week in Miami, we held a roundtable/hackathon to discuss 
some of the major areas the community would like to focus more attention.


The discussions were passionate and were mainly focused around networking and 
our current use of our home-spun Virtual Router.


For most of the us, the VR has become a challenging beast, mainly due to how 
difficult it is to end-to-end test for new releases.

Quite often PRs are pushed that fix an issue on one feature set, but break 
another unintentionally. This has a great deal to do with how inter-mingled all 
the features are currently.


We floated some ideas related to short term VR fixes in order to make it more 
modular, as well as API driven, rather than the currently SSH JSON injections.

A number of possible alternatives were also brought up to see what VR feature 
coverage could be handled by other virtual appliances currently out on the 
market.


These included (but not limited to):


VyOS (current PR out there for integration via a plugin – thanks Matthew!)

Microtek (Commerical)

Openswitch/Flexswitch

Cloud Router


The second major topic of the day was related to how we want to integrate 
networking moving forward.


A fair number of individuals felt that we shouldn't be focusing so much on 
integrating network functions, but relying on other network orchestrators to 
hand this.

It was also noted that what draws a lot of people to ACS is the fact we have a 
VR and do provide these functions out of the box.


We discussed how we could standardize the network sub system to use some sort 
of queuing bus to make it easier for others projects to integrate their 
solutions.

The current plugin implementation is fairly complex and often other projects 
(or commercial entities) put it into the too hard basket, until someone either 
does it themselves or is willing to pay for the development.

Most also felt it was important to maintain a default network function that 
works out of the box so that the complexity of a full orchestrator could be 
avoided if not needed.


I'm sure I've missed some key points, so hopefully this starts a discussion 
with the entire community of where we focused next.


Thanks to all those that participated on Tuesday afternoon.


- Si