[Starlingx-discuss] Challenges with the support to deploy stx-openstack in 7.0

Thu Jun 30 12:10:35 UTC 2022

On Thu, Jun 30, 2022 at 6:50 PM Waines, Greg <Greg.Waines at windriver.com> wrote:
>
> I think what I heard yesterday is that we believe stx-openstack runs on STX 7 w/k8s v1.21 ... although there are two outstanding sanity problems that are currently open.
> Stx-openstack sanity has not been running for over a month because of transition of starlingx sanity from Intel to Wind River.
> It is believed that stx-openstack application (based on armada) will NOT work on STX 7 w/k8s v1.22 or v1.23;   where v1.23 is the default for STX 7.
>
> I agree that it is concerning that the work on stx-openstack support of fluxcd and k8s v1.22 & v1.23 is behind.
>
> Generally the starlingx community support for stx-openstack sub-project has decreased significantly in the last few years.
>    - A team from Intel (Bruce Jones, Austin Sun, Mingyuan Qi) supported this originally, but stopped supporting stx-openstack in StarlingX a year ago or so,
>    - A team from Wind River (Douglas Periera) picked up support for stx-openstack in StarlingX a year and a half ago,
>      but as mentioned at the last PTG, their level of contribution has been reduced due to internal Wind River priorities.
>      I believe Douglas only has a team of ~4 working on stx-openstack.
>      They are currently working on fluxcd support and Debian support for stx-openstack, but current plans don't show this being available until end of year, due to capacity of team.
>
>
> Despite this, I still think it is the right decision to release STX 7 without stx-openstack fully supported.
> I believe the majority of users of StarlingX are not using stx-openstack.
> I believe the majority of users of StarlingX are only leveraging the Kubernetes Platform, and StarlingX's infrastructure management of that Kubernetes Platform.

well, sh!t3 ... you might want to read my previous email from a few
days ago, "subject: docker vs cri-o / centos vs alma / silverblue /
coreos." As I for one, will no longer
be able to deploy starlingx beyond 6.x if openstack is not onboard we
in the process of deploying magmacore for a commercial telco, like
other commercial telcos, your
now basically shooting yourself in the foot, as if this is the case we
end up never being able to upgrade the platforms we/I have already
deployed for many. I would have
to say, now i'm upset. I have always been a big advocate and where I
can / am able to deploy it.  It seems now that you might have boxed us
in and are leaving us in the dust.
And if that's the case then you might want to focus on at least making
it work in VMs, since now we are going to have to utilize some other
orchestrated virtualization product.
Sorry, but I honestly feel it's complete and total BS to do this to
your user base. And yes I have a super strong opinion about it being
dropped. It really needs to stay or your going to
literally alienate a good part of your current user base, and its
further adoption in the telecom arena.

>
>
> Greg.
>
> p.s. If we release STX 7, and we do get concerned feedback on limited support for stx-openstack in STX 7,  perhaps this is good opportunity to seek help from these concerned StarlingX Users of stx-openstack to become contributors.
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ildiko Vancsa <ildiko.vancsa at gmail.com>
> Sent: Wednesday, June 29, 2022 11:24 PM
> To: Waines, Greg <Greg.Waines at windriver.com>; Qi, Mingyuan <mingyuan.qi at intel.com>; Shuquan Huang <huang.shuquan at 99cloud.net>; Subramanian, Ramaswamy <Ramaswamy.Subramanian at windriver.com>; StarlingX ML <starlingx-discuss at lists.starlingx.io>
> Subject: Challenges with the support to deploy stx-openstack in 7.0
>
> [Please note: This e-mail is from an EXTERNAL e-mail address]
>
> Hi StarlingX TSC and Community,
>
> I’m reaching out to you about one of the topics that came up during the Release Team meeting[1] earlier today, which is the replacement of Armada with FluxCD. The conversation got me a little confused and I would like to follow up on a few questions and concerns.
>
> Background: According to the current state of the 7.0 release the work item is in a stage where it is operational and the feature is marked ‘Done’ in the release spreadsheet. At the same time, it does not support the deployment of OpenStack as part of StarlingX. I found this surprising, as my expectation was that the goal and expected outcome of the feature implementation was to provide the same functionality as Armada did.
>
> The spec[2] also lists the following work items:
> * Update the application framework to use the Helm/Source controllers
> * Update all applications to use the Helm/Source controllers for deploying/updating applications
> * Provide upgrade support to update all applications to the Helm Controller and remove the Armada pod
>
> Questions and concerns: My understanding was that ‘application’ refers to OpenStack among other components. Is that a false assumption?
>
> While it can happen that a bigger work item gets released with partial functionality, it was raised during the call today that StarlingX 7.0 might get released without the support to deploy OpenStack potentially due to issues with the now deprecated Armada component. Is my understanding correct that it is a possible scenario for StarlingX 7.0?
>
> If the above scenario happened, it would result in a very visible user-facing change which can provide issues to existing users or shrink the pool of potential new ones. While OpenStack is utilizing the advantages of being deployed in containers, it is still a dominant feature of StarlingX to provide infrastructure functionality. In that sense, I think there are concerns that would be worthwhile to evaluate to decide if it is a blocking issue to not being able to deploy it within StarlingX in the 7.0 release. What are your thoughts about this? Have the impacts of the above mentioned scenario been evaluated already?
>
> Thanks and Best Regards,
> Ildikó
>
> [1] https://etherpad.opendev.org/p/stx-releases
> [2] https://review.opendev.org/c/starlingx/specs/+/829595
>
> ———
>
> Ildikó Váncsa
> Senior Manager, Community & Ecosystem
> Open Infrastructure Foundation
>
>
>
>
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