Notes from UGent workshop added

Author: jouvin

.travis-scripts/dictionary.txt

@@ -1,6 +1,7 @@
 AFS
 AII
 Annecy
+APEL
 API
 aquilon
 Aquilon
@@ -16,6 +17,7 @@ compilable
 Compilable
 config
 cron
+CumulusOS
 CVE
 CVEs
 devel
@@ -37,14 +39,18 @@ gcc
 GID
 Gintare
 GitHub
+GOCDB
 GPFS
 GPG
 GPU
 GPUs
 GRN
 GRNs
 hacky
+HPC
+HTC
 HEPiX
+HTCondor
 hypervisor
 hypervisors
 init
@@ -57,6 +63,8 @@ jrha
 JSON
 Kerberos
 keytab
+Kickstart
+Kubernetes
 LAL
 LC
 LDAP
@@ -72,22 +80,26 @@ middleware
 namespace
 namespaces
 NIC
+NIS
 NFS
 noarch
 NTP
 OneFlow
 OpenNebula
+OpenID
 OpenStack
 org
 pakiti
 Pakiti
 panc
+panlint
 Perl
 Postgres
 postgres
 PostgreSQL
 postgresql
 PowerDNS
+pre
 predeployment
 protobuf
 PyPI
@@ -125,6 +137,7 @@ vCenter
 versioned
 VirtualEnv
 virtualenv
+virtualised
 VLAN
 VM
 VMs

_posts/2018-10-29-workshop-ugent.md

@@ -0,0 +1,130 @@
+---
+layout: article
+title: Summary of 2th Quattor workshop (2018-10-29 to 2018-10-31, University of Gent)
+category: meeting
+author: Michel Jouvin
+---
+
+# Quattor Workshop - UGent - 29-31/10/2018
+
+
+## Site Reports
+
+### UGent
+
+Considering looking at Aquilon but for the time being still will SCDB
+* Tweaked it more in the meantime...
+
+OpenStack: wrote a component that can manage/configure most of OpenStack services
+
+### RAL
+
+More and more Quattor/Aquilon usage
+* HPC on board
+* Other system groups suggested to use it: want to promote commonality across the department
+
+Aquilon: working well but with a few local tweaks
+
+Ceph: less and less configuration to do at each new release, easier to support in Quattor
+
+Work in progress with FreeIPA but still a long journey...
+* Need to cleanup LDAP and NIS services first...
+
+James now more involved in HTC configuration/management
+* Batch system: HTCondor
+* Also managing the teams in charge of grid GOCDB and APEL
+
+### MS
+
+Big challenge: integrate new teams, teach them best practices
+* Code review is a key (Gerrit)
+* panlint helps
+* More documentation on how to right proper pan would help
+
+Looking at integrating Docker/Kubernetes as the provisioning infrastructure for grid
+
+Move out of AFS impacts Kerberos: which alternatives? FreeIPA? Active Directory?
+
+Still has to support `RHEL5`: impacts ability to upgrade AII servers
+* Plan to look at `RHEL8` impact on Quattor when it is available: hopefully nothing disruptive (based on Fedora)...
+
+Working on pushing upstream MS modifications to components.
+
+### LAL
+
+Still running SCDB but Aquilon production instance started!
+* Manages a few nodes: need time to review/migrate site templates
+* Using Active Directory as the Kerberos infrastructure
+* Deployment server shared with SCDB
+* Very impressed by Aquilon quality
+* Documentation updated on quattor.org: should be pretty complete to start
+  * A preliminary SCDB migration guide available
+
+Aquilon: several contributions... and open issues
+* Good collaboration with MS after initial definition of the process
+
+Open question: how to model/integrate the cloud infrastructure in Aquilon
+* Don't want to track in Aquilon what is tracked in the cloud, like VM placement
+* The OpenStack cloud is our base infrastructure: more and more virtualised services with system image
+managed with Quattor
+  * Service data in a persistent disk
+  * Image built from a base image + Quattor customisation
+  
+Another wish for Aquilon: be able to define site-specific key/value pairs in Aquilon that will be passed to
+the plenary templates in some ways
+
+
+## Debian Support
+
+No progress since last workshop. Basically working except the network configuration.
+* Debian packaging done from RPM after unpacking them: hacky at this time, limited functionality (no pre and post script support)
+  * Files are properly relocated to be at the standard place in Debian
+* No initial install support
+  * Debian said to support Kickstart files: is it worth exploring?
+  * RAL focus: management of (CumulusOS) switches where initial install is not an issue.
+  * Same use case at UGent: currently using `metaconfig` to generate the appropriate config file and push them manually
+  to the switch
+  
+Main issue currently: a bug in `ncm-spma` apt back-end leading to packages not installed or with the wrong version.
+* See https://github.com/quattor/configuration-modules-core/pull/1258
+
+
+## OpenStack Support
+
+2 approaches currently for OpenStack configuration
+* The template library based on `metaconfig` to produce the required configuration
+  * Makes easy to support different OpenStack version with a different branch of the templates, like it was done for
+  grid middleware
+  * Used by RAL, LAL and Strasbourg
+* `ncm-openstack` by UGent that does everything: used to support `Ocata`, now supports Pike
+  * Internally based on `CAFRender` and Template Toolkit files: makes easy to add a new service (highly based on `metaconfig` code)
+  * The component is sensitive to OpenStack configuration changes with new versions: often significant changes
+  * Endpoints managed by Quattor
+  * Keystone users for the OpenStack services managed by Quattor
+  
+It would be good to see if the configuration module could be used with the template library
+* Main challenge is the support of multiple versions in the configuration module: impact on the schema and Template Toolkit files
+* Alex interested to have a look
+
+Work in progress at UGent on OpenID support but it will remain necessary to create users manually in OpenStack
+
+Also started with Manilla: some issues related to the fact that the NFS server needs to be managed outside OpenStack
+* Need to ensure that network routing is properly configured from the VM network to the NFS server
+* UGent: NFS server is based on Ganesha in front of Ceph
+  * No performance figures yet
+
+  
+## Quattor Releases
+
+Next one planned: 18.12
+* By Christmas
+* 3 releases a year seems a good rhythm
+  * 18.9 will not happen: not enough availability during summer
+  
+New layout for template library repositories: need to experiment with several ideas first, no planned soon...
+* See https://github.com/quattor/release/issues/309
+* Also needed to configuration modules
+* Approach foreseen: pull request from the source repository to the destination one, possibly after moving a branch content
+ in a directory (in the source repository?)
+* Also need to move open issues and pull requests to new repository (will not preserve numbers)
+  * A tool exists at GitHub for doing it (with cross references in both repositories)