Hi everyone!
It's been a long time since the last news. We have been thinking a lot
recently about how the community is going and what we want to do. This
leads to a not very well prepared first audio "community" meeting. I
writing this mail to keep you update to what we talked about.
First of all, I would like to mention that this meeting was open to
everyone and so will be the next one. For this first appointment, we've
only tried to define the current state of the project. Feel free to join
us the next one if you've missed the first one. The summary is below.
Shinken community feedback :
We got feedback from people that allow us to list most highlighted
features to use Shinken :
- Nagios configuration compatibility
- Scalability / Realm
- High customization with modules
- High availability feature
To conclude this part we state that Shinken was not a "must-have" for
small IT structure but for bigger one.
Configuration management :
Arbiter restarts is always necessary when managing conf (with puppet,
chef etc). This leads to a potential issue : there is a period without
monitoring and where there is no UI feedback (user "It's not working").
We assume 30-40 restart per day (average)
Possible solutions :
Make the broker load objects while the arbiter restarts.
Make the conf more granular so that we can send diff. But diff are
technically hard to code (hashing issues)
There are also environments with very small time to live that have to be
considerated (AWS instance, openstack etc). As the time to live is
short, arbiter has to restart more often. It can be achieved with a 5
minutes time to restart.
Possible solution :
Add a host at runtime through a HTTP API without linking it to other
host (linking is very cpu/time consuming). This can be done in the next
release.
Documentation:
Drawbacks :
The ReadTheDocs doc is not very accessible to new users, there is too
much information in it.
Tutorials have not been updated since a long time (Shinken
installation, module installation)
Lack of developer doc. We should, at least, add docstring (for
sphinx) in API functions
Benefits:
Shinken.io courses are a good beginning. We could take the example
of Mongodb courses (MOOC). Ease of learn is a reason to use a software
or not.
Third-party UI integration:
Livestatus is still THE way to interact with UI. Unfortunately the
python rewrite made in Shinken work so-so. (Pull request about RAM
consumption has been merged on master)
Idea : Use several CPU for the livestatus (ony threads for now)
Another idea : maybe we can find some other way to interact with UIs
(Nagvis / Thruk). Nagvis looks flexible.
Packaging:
Pip is really annoying, real packaging seems to be the best solution.
We would like to setup something to host our own packages. We won't be
OS dependent in this case (drift between upstream Shinken and package
shinken version in OS realeases)
Meetups :
Christophe Simon (geektophe) is volunteer to host a meetup (located
in Paris). He said he can buy beers :)
Monitoring and Metrics (metrology?)
There are basically two ways of thinking : Keep everything / keep
only what we need. In the first case we have them if we need them later
(kinda obvious) but there are only metrics not alerts.
Note : In some companies, they only consider high level monitoring.
Network / OS monitoring is done by a third party.
Another question : how to monitor properly application? Because usually
application monitoring is done passively.
Reporting :
We should do a module abnout it, any volunteer? Very hard part.
Shinken ecosystem:
Doc is a top priority. New users need more help
Third-party UI / software integration is also a priority (chef,
puppet, cfengine)
How to interact with other community and integrate Shinken to their
softwares? It was done easily with GPLI thank to ddurieux (core dev).
Puppet could be a first try as Olivier Hanesse (oliv-) worked on it
Shinken.io: We have to find the balance between well done (test, doc)
/ packaged / community supported modules and modules from any other
contributeur (code quality may vary). A good way to do it may be a
naming convention so that new user can make the difference (livestatus
=> official, username/liveblabla => not official). Examples :
(https://forge.puppetlabs.com/modules?utf-8=%E2%9C%93&sort=rank&q=apache),
for docker :
http://docs.docker.com/docker-hub/repos/#official-repositories
How monitoring is address worldwide (feedback is welcome!):
France : monitoring is usually setup by an intern. Consequently, they
usually chose "simple" software.
Canada, QC: monitoring is None. Customer directly ask to companies to
setup it for them. It's better for Shinken in this case, as consultant
can take "complex" softwares.
Conclusion (After Nap left):
Shinken is mainly done for huge environments (not small companies).
The focus is currently on technical people and not on managers.
The feedback we have during IT events usually comes from technical
guys. GLPI is actually doing a great job in mixing communities.
OpenStack (and variable size env) is a priority for Shinken but it
will bring new issue to the table (reload). The fact Shinken and
Openstack are python is good.
Now some stuff to do :
Packaging : Create a repo for Shinken
Redhat : Hvad and David Guenault are volunteer
Deb : Thibault Cohen is working on it
Doc for dev:
Sebastien Coavoux and Thibault Cohen are ok with that but they
would like to do it with sphinx => Docstrings on functions (which is a
big no no for Nap :P)
Plan next meeting :
Well, looks like I'm doing this :). We need to find the topic.
There was to much subject on the last one. Roadmap draft and release
date for 2.2 could be a good start :)
Find a way to interact with our community :
waiting for sugg. For now it's this mailing list and framapad
Design style:
Nap's designer is on it. News soon
Well, I hope it was not that long to read. If you want more you can
visit the pad : https://lite5.framapad.org/p/NaSmK7HxA6. (French only).
Don't hesitate to ask question here or on IRC freenode. Everyone is
welcome as usual :)
Good Luck and Have Fun using Shinken!
Sébastien Coavoux
PS : I've tagged a 1.4.4 yesterday which contains a lot of fixes
(including the livestatus one). OBS package are not up to date yet
careful.
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