OpenStack upgrade - Task 024
Fit to programme
This task has been identified by the working groups as part of the agenda behind WP 2.3.
The task number is 024.
Description
Openstack is an open source cloud computing platform widely used to deploy infrastructure-as-a-service. It is also suitable for managing bare metal provisioning of HPC systems, and as such used by Durham and Cambridge.
However, it comes with a steep learning curve, high complexity and a rapidly changing environment, and involves many newer concepts that RTPs in large-scale compute may traditionally be unfamiliar with, including Ansible and Kubernetes.
The high complexity of OpenStack is challenging, and the underlying software stack changes rapidly, often losing backwards compatibility. Therefore, upgrades can be fraught.
This project seeks proposals to document community OpenStack journeys by institutions and sites that have gone down this route, delivering honest user stories detailing the routes taken, methods used and lived experience.
Information, description and documentation about system upgrades should also be delivered, and ideally this information should be captured during an ongoing, real system upgrade, so that details, warts-and-all, can be captured and documented.
This proposal will aid RTP team “upskilling” as significant understanding will be required to sort through installation notes, configuration files and other sources.
A key output will be documentation to advise other RTPs on how upgrades can be effectively performed on live systems.
Approach and methodology
This project should document OpenStack install and configuration procedures, drawing on configuration from real systems.
It should also seek to document the process of a live OpenStack upgrade, which is often fraught with problems, and highly complex, with significant investment in time required to understand potential sticking points.
Ongoing live documentation and methodology should be captured, and a chronological account published online. Additionally, the steps taken should be developed into a guide, providing the principles, though it is noted that each upgrade will be different and experience different problems.
This experience will deliver significant OpenStack on-the-job training to RTPs.
Outputs
Outputs include documentation on the SHAREing website on how to complete upgrades, a chronological upgrade account, details of the RTP experience, and increased RTP skills.