[Gluster-users] [Gluster-devel] Fwd: Re: GlusterFS removal from Openstack Cinder

Tue May 30 23:22:34 UTC 2017

On 05/30/2017 03:52 PM, Ric Wheeler wrote:
> On 05/30/2017 06:37 PM, Joe Julian wrote:
>> On 05/30/2017 03:24 PM, Ric Wheeler wrote:
>>> On 05/27/2017 03:02 AM, Joe Julian wrote:
>>>> On 05/26/2017 11:38 PM, Pranith Kumar Karampuri wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On Wed, May 24, 2017 at 9:10 PM, Joe Julian <joe at julianfamily.org 
>>>>> <mailto:joe at julianfamily.org>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>     Forwarded for posterity and follow-up.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>     -------- Forwarded Message --------
>>>>>     Subject:     Re: GlusterFS removal from Openstack Cinder
>>>>>     Date:     Fri, 05 May 2017 21:07:27 +0000
>>>>>     From:     Amye Scavarda <amye at redhat.com> 
>>>>> <mailto:amye at redhat.com>
>>>>>     To:     Eric Harney <eharney at redhat.com> 
>>>>> <mailto:eharney at redhat.com>, Joe
>>>>>     Julian <me at joejulian.name> <mailto:me at joejulian.name>, Vijay 
>>>>> Bellur
>>>>>     <vbellur at redhat.com> <mailto:vbellur at redhat.com>
>>>>>     CC:     Amye Scavarda <amye at redhat.com> <mailto:amye at redhat.com>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>     Eric,
>>>>>     I'm sorry to hear this.
>>>>>     I'm reaching out internally (within Gluster CI team and CentOS 
>>>>> CI which
>>>>>     supports Gluster) to get an idea of the level of effort we'll 
>>>>> need to
>>>>>     provide to resolve this.
>>>>>     It'll take me a few days to get this, but this is on my radar. 
>>>>> In the
>>>>>     meantime, is there somewhere I should be looking at for 
>>>>> requirements to
>>>>>     meet this gateway?
>>>>>
>>>>>     Thanks!
>>>>>     -- amye
>>>>>
>>>>>     On Fri, May 5, 2017 at 16:09 Joe Julian <me at joejulian.name
>>>>>     <mailto:me at joejulian.name>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>         On 05/05/2017 12:54 PM, Eric Harney wrote:
>>>>>         >> On 04/28/2017 12:41 PM, Joe Julian wrote:
>>>>>         >>> I learned, today, that GlusterFS was deprecated and 
>>>>> removed from
>>>>>         >>> Cinder as one of our #gluster (freenode) users was 
>>>>> attempting to
>>>>>         >>> upgrade openstack. I could find no rational nor 
>>>>> discussion of that
>>>>>         >>> removal. Could you please educate me about that decision?
>>>>>         >>>
>>>>>         >
>>>>>         > Hi Joe,
>>>>>         >
>>>>>         > I can fill in on the rationale here.
>>>>>         >
>>>>>         > Keeping a driver in the Cinder tree requires running a 
>>>>> CI platform to
>>>>>         > test that driver and report results against all 
>>>>> patchsets submitted to
>>>>>         > Cinder.  This is a fairly large burden, which we could 
>>>>> not meet
>>>>>         once the
>>>>>         > Gluster Cinder driver was no longer an active 
>>>>> development target at
>>>>>         Red Hat.
>>>>>         >
>>>>>         > This was communicated via a warning issued by the driver 
>>>>> for anyone
>>>>>         > running the OpenStack Newton code, and via the Cinder 
>>>>> release notes for
>>>>>         > the Ocata release.  (I can see in retrospect that this 
>>>>> was probably not
>>>>>         > communicated widely enough.)
>>>>>         >
>>>>>         > I apologize for not reaching out to the Gluster 
>>>>> community about this.
>>>>>         >
>>>>>         > If someone from the Gluster world is interested in 
>>>>> bringing this driver
>>>>>         > back, I can help coordinate there.  But it will require 
>>>>> someone
>>>>>         stepping
>>>>>         > in in a big way to maintain it.
>>>>>         >
>>>>>         > Thanks,
>>>>>         > Eric
>>>>>
>>>>>         Ah, Red Hat's statement that the acquisition of InkTank 
>>>>> was not an
>>>>>         abandonment of Gluster seems rather disingenuous now. I'm 
>>>>> disappointed.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> I am a Red Hat employee working on gluster and I am happy with the 
>>>>> kind of investments the company did in GlusterFS. Still am. It is 
>>>>> a pretty good company and really open. I never had any trouble 
>>>>> saying something the management did is wrong when I strongly felt 
>>>>> and they would give a decent reason for their decision.
>>>>
>>>> Happy to hear that. Still looks like meddling to an outsider. Not 
>>>> the Gluster team's fault though (although more participation of the 
>>>> developers in community meetings would probably help with that 
>>>> feeling of being disconnected, in my own personal opinion).
>>>
>>> As a community, each member needs to make sure that their specific 
>>> use case has the resources it needs to flourish. If some team cares 
>>> about Gluster in openstack, they should step forward and provide the 
>>> engineering and hardware resources needed to make it succeed.
>>>
>>> Red Hat has and continues to pour resources into Gluster - Gluster 
>>> is thriving. We have loads of work going on with gluster in RHEV, 
>>> Kubernetes, NFS Ganesha and Samba.
>>>
>>> What we are not doing and that has been clear for many years now is 
>>> to invest in Gluster in openstack.
>>
>> Again, nobody communicated with either the Openstack nor the Gluster 
>> communities about this, short of deprecation warnings which are not 
>> the most effective way of reaching people (that may be wrong on the 
>> part of most users, but unfortunately it's a reality). Red Hat wasn't 
>> interested in investing in Gluster on Openstack anymore. That's fine. 
>> It's your money. As a community leader, proponent, and champion, 
>> however, Red Hat should have at least invested in finding an 
>> interested party to take over the effort - imho.
>
> I think it is 100% disingenuous to position this as a surprise 
> withdrawal of Gluster from Red Hat from openstack. The position we 
> have had with what we have focused on with Gluster has been 
> exceedingly clear for years.

I am completely sincere. I do not posture or pose. I have absolutely no 
reason to do so. I am not financially connected to gluster in any way. 
The only place I currently use gluster is at home. My day job with 
Samsung CNCT is solely connected to kubernetes and all the persistent 
storage needs for our use is currently handled by AWS EBS volumes. I am 
simply a member of the community for the sake of the community so when I 
make a statement about this being a surprise I do so as a user and 
community member.

>
> As Eric pointed out, this was a warning in the Neutron code and was 
> also in the release notes for prior openstack releases.

https://docs.openstack.org/releasenotes/cinder/mitaka.html /gluster
https://docs.openstack.org/releasenotes/cinder/newton.html /gluster
https://docs.openstack.org/releasenotes/cinder/ocata.html /gluster
     * The GlusterFS volume driver, which was deprecated in the Newton 
release has been removed.

Sure, if there's a fault it lies with the release note author. Mistakes 
happen. I can shrug that off.

https://lists.gt.net/engine?list=openstack;do=search_results;search_type=AND;search_forum=forum_3;search_string=gluster&sb=post_time

https://www.google.com/search?q=gluster-users+search&oq=gluster-users+search&q=site:lists.gluster.org+openstack+cinder+driver+newton

No communication. Eric didn't think of doing so. Again, mistakes happen. 
<shrug>

Now we just want to move forward. I really couldn't care less about the 
history of this except to possibly learn from it. I did not want this to 
turn into an issue of blame nor one of defense. Stuff happens, fine, can 
we learn and fix it and turn this in to a positive? I think so.

>>
>>>
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>         Would you please start a thread on the gluster-users and 
>>>>> gluster-devel
>>>>>         mailing lists and see if there's anyone willing to take 
>>>>> ownership of
>>>>>         this. I'm certainly willing to participate as well but my 
>>>>> $dayjob has
>>>>>         gone more kubernetes than openstack so I have only my 
>>>>> limited free time
>>>>>         that I can donate.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Do we know what would maintaining cinder as active entail? Did 
>>>>> Eric get back to any of you?
>>>>
>>>> Haven't heard anything more, no.
>>>
>>> Who in the community that is using gluster in openstack is willing 
>>> to help with their own time and resources to meet the openstack 
>>> requirements?
>>
>> Nobody knows. We have no idea what that entails. Can you help get 
>> that question answered? 
>
> The way open source works is that when some gives notice in a release 
> that they are not maintaining a subsystem, that is an invitation for 
> someone else to step up. Sounds like an excellent job for the 
> community to dig into.

The way open source actually *works* is when there is an active and 
communicative community. I know I don't need to tell you, you guys have 
literally written the book on community.

>
> As someone who runs the largest team of paid Gluster engineers in the 
> world, my job is to deliver engineering features in Red Hat Gluster 
> Storage that meet our business needs.

Agreed. No argument nor expectation otherwise.
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