Linux, open source, audio, and stuff

  • Home
  • About

Tag Archives: POWER

OpenStack Sydney Summit

1st December, 2017 · krtaylor

Sydney BannerThe week started dreary and cold, the coldest spring November in a decade, but turned out beautiful as the week went on. It made it hard to stay inside and focus on OpenStack for the three short days of Summit down under in Sydney. I planned an extra day upfront to clear my head of any jet lag and that was a really good strategy, also allowing for early registration on Sunday. I was not, however, prepared for the jet lag I experienced once I returned home, more on that later.

The keynotes, well, meh. They were entertaining, but lacked content or were just too much of a marketing pitch. The best info was the user survey overview and it was great to see that there is a strong presence for OpenStack in Australia. As usual, the best sessions were the hallway or beer sessions. Monday night was the traditional booth crawl in the Marketplace expo hall, and that was fun. The food and drink options were numerous and plentiful, and attendance was moderate. It was clear to see that this was a much smaller summit than in the past. I don’t have an idea of what the overall attendance number was, but it felt about like San Diego Summit in 2012.

I attended several of the onboarding and update sessions for a few projects and was pleasantly surprised at the progress being made. The Kolla onboarding session was done by Jeffrey Zhang and offered a good overview of the project with plenty of technical content. It was nice to get a different perspective and I learned much more about the configuration of kolla-ansible deployment process. It was lightly attended, but several interested folks had good questions and all seemed engaged.

 

Red Hat’s Steve Hardy did a useful session on an example architecture for using TripleO, Ansible and containers for large deployments of OpenStack. Containers are quickly becoming the new standard for packaging OpenStack services with all their necessary configuration and dependencies and Ansible is also leading the pack in configuration management. TripleO is a somewhat purist view, using OpenStack to manage deployments. It is also the preferred method for getting Red Hat OSP installed in large customer environments. Also noteworthy, the TripleO Project Update, the Kolla Ops Feedback, and Baremetal Server Management with Redfish.

I also attended a couple of sessions on community development. There is some really good information and experience being gathered from the boom and now settling of the community. The work seems to be centered around how do we keep and encourage deep development and core reviewers, while also not discouraging part-time or even one-time contributions. There were discussions on mentoring, legal simplification, and other topics to make sure the community continues adding healthy new members.

Between the sessions, I spent a fair amount of time in and around the IBM booth in the Marketplace expo. One of the fun events planned in the Marketplace was the Melbourne Cup horse race celebration. It was an all day event for some, dressing in full formal attire, but it was very successful in pulling most all attending into the Marketplace to watch the event. I have in the past had a picture of a shiny Power system displayed proudly in the IBM booth, but to everyone involved in the booth organization’s frustration, it did not make it in time. Darn.

I am still not a fan of the split summit/PTG format, and with the lowest attendance in years, I think the community is speaking but the TC and Foundation are just not listening. It is time to focus on the future of the OpenStack project and pull the summit and PTG together again. The community has spoken, few companies can afford to continue to send their developers to 4 conferences or design summits per year.

There is a lot of focus on increasing contributions, the feel is like everyone is trying to restore OpenStack to its once former glory, but the days of rapid growth and rabid over-the-top marketing are over. I feel like the project is finally becoming right-sized after being grotesquely over-invested. It is time to embrace the new reality of the size of the project. Pull in the core projects and developers, get rid of the silly big-tent, and focus on making OpenStack easier to install and use.

Ugh, the jet lag coming home was the worst I have ever experienced. I have heard to plan a day per hour of time zone difference. That might be a bit extreme, but after this trip, I’d have to say it was pretty close. I had trouble restoring my normal rhythm for several days after returning. Going westward to Sydney didn’t give me nearly as much trouble. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that my returning flight left at ~11:30 am and arrived home at ~2:15 the same day after almost a day of travel. Ouch.

Sydney is a beautiful city and I hope to be able to return some day. I’m looking forward to seeing OpenStack continue as the framework for open cloud resource management. See you in Dublin for the next PTG!

Posted in Kolla, OpenStack, Red Hat, TripleO | Tags: Ironic, Kolla, OpenStack, POWER, SydneySummit, TripleO |

Boston OpenStack Summit and Forum

23rd May, 2017 · krtaylor

Boston Summit and Forum May 8-11

OpenStack Boston KeynoteI can’t believe yet another summit has come and gone. This was the first summit after the split of Design Summit and PTG and I have to admit overall I felt like it was a success, with some caveats.

The event started off Monday morning with Keynotes – some were really good, some well, not so much. There were a lot of stats presented from the user survey about how OpenStack has grown 44%, where 2/3 of the deployments were in production. That’s great news, especially with the right-sizing that has been happening in the cloud ecosystem.

Even though I feel like OpenStack is the right horse to ride, I fear that there is still some needed correction in the number of projects and active contributors to get it back to a manageable size and focus.

OpenStack Boston IBM BoothAfter several keynote sessions that tested the effectiveness of my morning coffee, I headed off to the booth to see if any help was needed getting up and going before the opening of the Marketplace.

I was determined to increase the Server Group presence in the IBM booth and I am proud of my extended team coming together and making it happen for Boston. I had several team representatives step up and be Subject Matter Experts for Ask-me-about sessions or to give demos in the booth.

It was a smaller booth, but the layout was good and it was always packed with IBMers and interested Stackers. We had a nice new IBM POWER system on display, a new OpenPower system code named “Minsky”. This is a 2 POWER CPU system with 4 NVIDIA GPUs and up to 1TB of memory – all in a 2U rack. There were always folks around drooling over it’s serious computational horsepower.

I volunteered to help work in the booth and to also be a SME for OpenStack support on OpenPower systems. We also had other teams represented from the IBM Open Systems Development/Linux Technology Center there to answer questions about Neutron (networking), Ironic (bare metal provisioning) and Trove (database as a service). I was able to watch several of the demos and the team did a great job.

Monday concluded with the traditional “Booth Crawl” where vendors sponsor hor d’oeuvres and drinks. Since the team was all there working the booth, we didn’t get to wander around and partake, so afterwards we went across the street and had a team dinner at “Whiskey”, a fun, noisy college pub with great food.

I did get a chance to go to a few sessions Monday afternoon, but they were somewhat hit-or-miss. The Ironic Dev-Ops feedback session was good, but there were few sessions overall for Ironic, one of the projects I have been involved recently. I went to one of the Ubuntu sponsored sessions that was supposed to be on GPUs and it wound up just being a LXD sales pitch. I’m an Ubuntu fan and user, but that was a bummer.

Tuesday also started with keynote sessions, but I had a harder time seeing the importance for an OpenStack developer, with the exception of the Interop Challange and their attachment to Cockroach database. I then attended a session from AT&T on their container strategy and how OpenStack is used. They had an interesting 3 pronged approach, with valid cases for each environment, interesting real-world use of OpenStack and containers.

OpenStack Fenway partyThe afternoon was spent chasing down Ironic sessions that ended quickly and working at the booth. That evening was the one public event at the nearby Fenway park. They obviously spent a lot on this event, but honestly it would have been nice to have had a social gathering at the summit hotel, in a ballroom for instance and save the money. Don’t get me wrong, Fenway was amazing, but it was outside, raining, cold and on top of that, there was no provided transportation from the convention. It was only a few blocks, but in the cold and rain. It was a great experience to see the park and have some park grub, but other than buy beers, there wasn’t much to do. I decided that since I could by myself a beer in the dry warmth of the hotel lobby, I decided to call it an early night.

OpenStack ForumWednesday was much more useful for me as the summit transitioned into being more Forum focused. I attended the Kolla project onboarding session. It was the highlight of the show for me since it took the basic understanding that I had of the various parts of Kolla and stitched them all together. It started high-level with an overview of the components and what they did, a review of the project goals, and then deep-dived into the details of building and deployment. My only wish was that the session was recorded for future reference and sharing.

The Forum sessions Wednesday and Thursday were useful, getting closer to what I was hoping for – something like a all-in-one midcycle. But some of the sessions could have been more useful if there was less of the “experts” pontificating the latest buzz-words and more getting down to the business at hand. My favorite buzz word from the Forum: “echo-chambering”. One session that was particularly interesting was one on comparing Kubernetes and OpenStack resource management. It was a useful comparison with clear slides and excellent description. The session slides are available and recommended. I especially enjoyed the glossary comparison of terms and parameters from each environment.

Overall, like I said, it was a good summit. I learned a lot and made new friends. But, I feel like it needs to have more direction in the selection of sessions. For one, pick a much more diverse set of session topics. Every other session was on Kubernetes. I know there were more diverse sessions proposed. Another, feel free to call it an all-in-one mid cycle instead of the Forum. That, with the Ops, Onboarding and Marketplace would make for a great event, and retain the usefulness for a quiet design meeting with just the developers. Next stop: Denver PTG!

Posted in Ironic, Kolla, OpenStack | Tags: Ironic, Kolla, OpenStack, POWER |

LTC contributions to the OpenStack Newton release

14th October, 2016 · krtaylor

OpenStack Newton LogoOpenStack just announced it’s 14th release, code named Newton after a historic house in Austin Texas. More than 2500 developers contributed to the release, but specifically, I’d like to highlight some of the contributions made by my team in IBM’s Linux Technology Center. We are involved in several key areas supporting scale-out POWER systems on the KVM hypervisor as well as just working in the community to make OpenStack better. We have been active contributors to the OpenStack community since the Folsom release and continue to share our experience with new teams getting started both internally to IBM and externally. I’m proud to be a part of the LTC and for our continued contributions to the OpenStack project. I’m looking forward to what we’ll accomplish in the Ocata release!

Here are some of our contribution highlights:

Nova – compute engine

  • Contributed to the design and implementation of new placement engine and its API
  • Definition and implementation of resource providers allowing scheduling and placement decisions to be more generic
  • Cleanup of configuration options, adding help text and improving formatting consistency
  • Fixed API inconsistencies between calls by admin and non-admin
  • Scheduler subteam meeting leadership

Ironic – bare metal

  • Power support for the Ironic Python Agent
  • Projectified MoltenIron, a baremetal test pool management toolset
  • Fixed VirtualBox defect

Neutron – networking

  • Implemented unit test suite for DNS integration
  • Refactor DNS integration out of database core plugin
  • Routed networks
    • Implemented host segment mapping
    • Developed multi node Vagrant environment to test routed networks functionality
    • Developed placement API client to enable routed networks integration with Nova

KVM on Power CI testing

  • Increased coverage for KVM on Power: Multinode, Grenade, Neutron
  • Infrastructure improvements for KVM on Power 3rd party CI: openstack health, logstash, elastic search, kibana
  • NUMA Fix
  • Created MariaDB plugin for Devstack

Magnum – Container Orchestration as a Service

  • Implement Mesos cluster smart scale down mechanism
  • Enable notification mechanism for Magnum clusters
  • Generate a human readable name for Magnum clusters when not specified
  • Expose underlying error during Magnum cluster creation to help debug

Watcher – resource  balancing

  • Advised theWatcher team as they became an official OpenStack Big Tent project

 

Posted in OpenStack | Tags: KVM, Newton, OpenStack, POWER |

Pages

  • About

Archives

  • July 2020
  • February 2019
  • October 2018
  • April 2018
  • December 2017
  • October 2017
  • May 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • October 2016
  • May 2016
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • March 2015
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • June 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012
  • July 2011
  • May 2011
  • March 2011
  • January 2011
  • December 2010

Categories

  • About (2)
  • ALSA (8)
  • Android (3)
  • BeagleBoard (1)
  • DragonBoard410C (1)
  • Ironic (3)
  • Kolla (3)
  • Linaro Sound (12)
  • Open Source Community (2)
  • OpenBMC (4)
  • OpenStack (12)
  • PandaBoard (5)
  • PulseAudio (7)
  • Red Hat (1)
  • Swift (1)
  • Third-party CI (4)
  • TripleO (2)
  • Ubuntu (5)
  • Uncategorized (1)

WordPress

  • Log in
  • WordPress

Subscribe

  • Entries (RSS)
  • Comments (RSS)

Pages

  • About

Archives

  • July 2020
  • February 2019
  • October 2018
  • April 2018
  • December 2017
  • October 2017
  • May 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • October 2016
  • May 2016
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • March 2015
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • June 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012
  • July 2011
  • May 2011
  • March 2011
  • January 2011
  • December 2010

Categories

  • About (2)
  • ALSA (8)
  • Android (3)
  • BeagleBoard (1)
  • DragonBoard410C (1)
  • Ironic (3)
  • Kolla (3)
  • Linaro Sound (12)
  • Open Source Community (2)
  • OpenBMC (4)
  • OpenStack (12)
  • PandaBoard (5)
  • PulseAudio (7)
  • Red Hat (1)
  • Swift (1)
  • Third-party CI (4)
  • TripleO (2)
  • Ubuntu (5)
  • Uncategorized (1)

WordPress

  • Log in
  • WordPress
© Kurt Taylor, all rights reserved
  • About