Re: BOSH OpenStack CPI: planned end of maintenance by end of 2019
Hi everyone, hi Daniel,
Thanks for the interest in the BOSH OpenStack CPI, I'm happy to give you some perspective on what we had been doing in the past and what the current status is.
* We've automated pretty much everything in terms of regular maintenance. This includes updates of the dependencies like rubygems [1], and consumption of the ruby-release in bosh packages [2]. We have automated the update of ruby-release itself, such that ruby, rubygems, etc are automatically updated.
* All PRs are tested against the supported set of OpenStack APIs by using the cf-openstack-validator to run a base set of API interactions with OpenStack [3]. We're using OpenLab [4] to provide virtualized OpenStack environments for us. Adding a new one is only a few lines of yml [5]
* New versions of bosh, a stemcell, or the cpi are automatically tested in a pipeline using BATs and e2e tests. While this pipeline currently runs against an SAP provided OpenStack, it is easy to set this up against a different OpenStack
* There are very few issues open (currently 7 issues and 3 of those are feature requests)
* There isn't really left-over work for now: Our backlog contains 37 open stories tagged with 'cpi' [6]. Quite a few are crossed out (we decided not to do them, but keep them for future reference to document decisions), or even about different CPIs like AWS and GCP.
* The biggest pain point in the past have been fog-openstack and excon. Updates of these two libraries are always a gamble, they don't seem to be well-tested and introduced quite some annoyances over the last few years. One example is how the individual OpenStack projects adopted microversions in their APIs and how fog-openstack selects which version to use. More recently, this didn't have much impact – it mostly matters when you're trying to use functionality that isn't present below a certain microversion or has been removed starting from a version.
* We have been trying to support the community with their OpenStack issues in #openstack and #bosh on CF Slack. Interrupts don't come on a daily basis, but there is a need for looking at community questions.
* We tried to improve the ecosystem with projects like cf-openstack-validator [9], better OpenStack support in bbl [10], and .tf templates for OpenStack [11]. Also maintaining the OpenStack part of the docs on bosh.io
Overall, I guess the amount of work you would need to put into the OpenStack CPI depends on what you're trying to do with it. My guess is that a pair of engineers is sufficient to address some of the more recent feature requests and keep the system alive and healthy.
Let me know if you need more information to get a feeling for what it means to take over this work. I'm happy to talk about individual aspects some more, if it helps.
Warm regards
Marco
[1] https://github.com/cloudfoundry/bosh-openstack-cpi-release/pull/212
[2] https://github.com/cloudfoundry/bosh-openstack-cpi-release/pull/207
[3] https://github.com/cloudfoundry/bosh-openstack-cpi-release/pull/212#issuecomment-518850649
[4] https://openlabtesting.org/
[6] https://www.pivotaltracker.com/n/projects/1456570/search?q=label%3A%22cpi%22
[7] https://github.com/cloudfoundry/bosh-openstack-cpi-release/issues/186
[8] https://github.com/cloudfoundry/bosh-openstack-cpi-release/issues/211
[9] https://github.com/cloudfoundry-incubator/cf-openstack-validator
[10] https://github.com/cloudfoundry/bosh-bootloader/pull/431
[11] https://github.com/cloudfoundry-incubator/bosh-openstack-environment-templates
From: <cf-bosh@...> on behalf of Daniel Jones <daniel.jones@...>
Reply to: "cf-bosh@..." <cf-bosh@...>
Date: Thursday, 22. August 2019 at 15:52
To: "Discussions about the Cloud Foundry BOSH project." <cf-bosh@...>
Cc: "cf-dev@..." <cf-dev@...>
Subject: Re: [cf-bosh] BOSH OpenStack CPI: planned end of maintenance by end of 2019
Hi all,
I should imagine there must be enough very large consumers of the OpenStack CPI to make it commercially viable for a small team to be funded that could maintain it, were all said consumers to pull together and contribute what I should imagine would be a small sliver of their total CF expenditure.
If any OpenStack CPI users want to talk to EngineerBetter about funded development, we'd be happy to have that conversation as we're doing some similar EOL work for other CF projects.
Similarly, if our chums at Anynines, Altoros, S&W, GrapeUp, EVoila, GStack, Armakuni, Novatec or others want to work together on this, we'd be open to that. I can also imagine that some chunk of Pivotal's revenue depends on this CPI, so perhaps some of our teal friends might be interested too? It could be like one of those Marvel films (that I don't watch) where we all team up to vanquish the evil villain of abandoned software.
Marco - how many pairs were working on these streams of work, and do you have a feel for the balance of vital maintenance, tech debt, new features, and quality-of-life improvements in the backlog?
Regards,
Daniel 'Deejay' Jones - CTO
+44 (0)79 8000 9153
EngineerBetter Ltd - More than cloud platform specialists
Dear Friends of OpenStack,
Since 2015, the BOSH OpenStack CPI [1] is maintained by the BOSH team Europe at SAP. Historically, this made sense, because SAP was a large user of OpenStack, but in the meantime our focus as a company has shifted.
Consequently, we would like to announce that our team at SAP will stop maintaining the BOSH OpenStack CPI and a few related projects like CF OpenStack validator [2] and bosh-openstack-environment-templates [3] *by the end of 2019*. Already starting right now, we are stopping feature work on the BOSH OpenStack CPI. From 2020 on, we will not release any new versions of the CPI, be it for fixing CVEs, ensuring support of new OpenStack versions, or other reasons.
If there is anybody in the community with interest to continue maintenance and development of the BOSH OpenStack CPI and potentially the related projects as well, we're happy to transfer the ownership of projects and CI pipelines. If no maintainer is found for a project, the regular course of action would be to move it to the cloudfoundry-attic organization.
If this is a topic you'd like to talk about, please reach out to us by replying to this mail or contacting me directly.
Warm regards
Marco
[1] https://github.com/cloudfoundry/bosh-openstack-cpi-release
[2] https://github.com/cloudfoundry-incubator/cf-openstack-validator
[3] https://github.com/cloudfoundry-incubator/bosh-openstack-environment-templates