Hello OpenStack community! My name is Summer and I am the community manager intern this summer. I’m excited to be working with Stephen, the OpenStack team, and all of you on this dynamic and rapidly growing project. I am a graduate student in the Library and Information Science program at the University of Texas at Austin. My library science background and the fact I have never worked in the tech sector before makes this a novel experience for me. But while I’m scrambling to understand in the ins and outs of cloud computing and the unique open-source community several similarities have presented themselves.
One of the things that attracted me to the field of library/ information science is the egalitarian and community-serving aspect of it. Connecting information or data to the people who need it is a basic tenet of the information professional. I love the idea that when I do not know the answer to a question (which is very, very often) someone out there does, and with a little searching that answer can be at my fingertips. Even this simple model of information sharing is analogous to the world of cloud computing. Rather than having an innate and static answer I am able to access the most recent knowledge from a variety of sources.
Of course building a network of resources to connect the question and the answer is essential. Even the best librarian won’t be able to find the right answer if they are not connected to a variety of resources, journals, articles, and most importantly people. This is where the OpenStack community seems to be excelling and growing so rapidly. It’s amazing to see how many local communities are springing up all around the world and working to increase the shared knowledge in an exponential fashion.
In the next couple months I will be working with Stephen to help make the various OpenStack communities more connected and up to date on recent developments through the various social networks and forums available. Stephen had me read Eric Raymond’s classic text “The Cathedral and the Bazaar” as an introduction to the open source ethos. This article reminded me of a similar paradigm shift in the library. Traditionally information professionals have been seen as a kind of gatekeeper (cathedral keeper?) of knowledge, now however they are recognizing the importance of opening those gates, letting in the bazaar, and participating in the conversation. So, hello! I’m excited to be part of this community and look forward to contributing to the OpenStack conversation.
I can be reached at summer.fouche@rackspace.com.
Direct from the VMblog.com site, comes a great video with Sameer Dholakia from Citrix and Joseph George from Dell on OpenStack and Project Olympus.
Citrix Synergy 2011 – Interview with Sameer Dholakia and Joseph George about OpenStack from VMblog on Vimeo.
OpenStack Community Newsletter – May 27, 2011
This weekly newsletter is a way for the community to learn about all the various activities occurring on a weekly basis. If you would like to add content to a weekly update or have an idea about this newsletter, please email stephen.spector@openstack.org.
OS Event Recap Spring 2011 from OpenStack on Vimeo.
HIGHLIGHTS
EVENTS
DEVELOPER COMMUNITY
GENERAL COMMUNITY
COMMUNITY STATISTICS (5/20– 5/26)
- Data Tracking Graphs – http://wiki.openstack.org/WeeklyNewsletter
- OpenStack Compute (NOVA) Data
- 39 Active Reviews
- 270 Active Branches – owned by 74 people & 15 teams
- 1214 commits by 69 people in last month
- OpenStack Object Storage (SWIFT) Data
- 1 Active Reviews
- 68 Active Branches – owned by 23 people & 6 teams
- 134 commits by 16 people in last month
- OpenStack Image Registry (GLANCE) Data
- 5 Active Reviews
- 25 Active Branches – owned by 7 people & 5 teams
- 75 commits by 8 people in last month
- Twitter Stats for Week: #openstack 326 total tweets; OpenStack 1381 total tweets (does not include RT)
- Bugs Stats for Week: 380 Tracked Bugs; 69 New Bugs; 40 In-process Bugs; 0 Critical Bugs; 23 High Importance Bugs; 248 Bugs (Fix Committed)
- Blueprints Stats for Week: 208 Blueprints; 13 Essential, 19 High, 18 Medium, 25 Low, 132 Undefined
- OpenStack Website Stats for Week: 14,537 Visits, 34,442 Pageviews, 54.71% New Visits
- Top 5 Pages: Home 39.93%; /projects 10.64%; /projects/compute 16.09%; /projects/storage 11.65%; /community 6.29%
OPENSTACK IN THE NEWS
Today at Citrix Synergy, the OpenStack project received another big boost with the announcement of Citrix Project Olympus. From the project’s website:
Leveraging OpenStack, Project Olympus delivers the next generation in cloud computing – a scalable, flexible, open-by-design cloud solution that enables service providers and enterprise alike to build their own cloud services.
The early access program for Project Olympus gives users:
- Citrix tested, certified and supported version of OpenStack
- A cloud-optimized version of XenServer
- Access to hardware
- Personalized design, engineering, training and support services
The press release on this announcement from Citrix is available here. Feedback from the broader community on this announcement has been incredibly positive and I wanted to share a few blog posts:
The final overview video from the recent OpenStack event is now available for your viewing pleasure. This is an excellent video with TONS of OpenStack community members from around the world talking about the project and community.
OS Event Recap Spring 2011 from OpenStack on Vimeo.
Many people have asked for more insight into the developer activities for OpenStack as the large number of code changes and proposals make it difficult to monitor everything happening. In hopes of exposing more of the developer activities, I plan to post a weekly or biweekly blog post on the latest development activities. If you have any ideas for this blog post, please email me at stephen.spector@openstack.org. I am always ready to listen to the community for new ideas.
Activities
Developer Mailing List (archive: https://lists.launchpad.net/openstack/)
This is select list of topics discussed this week in the developer mailing list and is not a complete list. Please visit the archive to see all the topics.
- Graphical Console for VMs w/o Network Stacks – Donal Lafferty is looking for a blueprint for a graphical console instead of text console. Mike Scherbakov replied with instructions for using the current Dashboard.
- Unassigned Essential Diablo Specs – Thierry Carrez listed a set of blueprints that are planned for Diablo but currently have no owner. The list is at https://lists.launchpad.net/openstack/msg02432.html.
- Python-novaclient vs. python-openstack.compute - Soren Hansen brings up the issue that we have 2 distinct but similar libraries doing the same thing; Sandy Walsh, Dan Prince, Gabe Westmaas, Ed Leafe, and Josh Kearney all joined in the discussion of how to handle this issue.
- Global deployment of Glance – Glen Campbell raises the issue of having replicas of Glance in multiple installations and how to maintain synch. Jay Pipes, Chris Behrens, and Eric Day discussed the idea of using SWIFT to manage the multiple zones issue and offload the problem from Glance.
Statistics
- Number of OpenStack Developers on Contributors List – 195
- Diablo Release Status – Blueprints
For the latest on development activities on OpenStack please check these sites for more details:
OpenStack Community Newsletter – May 20, 2011
This weekly newsletter is a way for the community to learn about all the various activities occurring on a weekly basis. If you would like to add content to a weekly update or have an idea about this newsletter, please email stephen.spector@openstack.org.
EVENTS
DEVELOPER COMMUNITY
GENERAL COMMUNITY
COMMUNITY STATISTICS (5/13– 5/19)
- Data Tracking Graphs – http://wiki.openstack.org/WeeklyNewsletter
- OpenStack Compute (NOVA) Data
- 41 Active Reviews
- 267 Active Branches – owned by 69 people & 15 teams
- 1002 commits by 67 people in last month
- OpenStack Object Storage (SWIFT) Data
- 4 Active Reviews
- 64 Active Branches – owned by 22 people & 6 teams
- 120 commits by 14 people in last month
- OpenStack Image Registry (GLANCE) Data
- 4 Active Reviews
- 22 Active Branches – owned by 6 people & 5 teams
- 85 commits by 7 people in last month
- Twitter Stats for Week: #openstack 151 total tweets; OpenStack 745 total tweets (does not include RT)
- Bugs Stats for Week: 356 Tracked Bugs; 89 New Bugs; 41 In-process Bugs; 0 Critical Bugs; 22 High Importance Bugs; 204 Bugs (Fix Committed)
- Blueprints Stats for Week: 205 Blueprints; 13 Essential, 19 High, 17 Medium, 19 Low, 137 Undefined
- OpenStack Website Stats for Week: 21,277 Visits, 47,799 Pageviews, 64.84% New Visits
- Top 5 Pages: Home 42.60%; /projects 10.59%; /projects/compute 15.83%; /projects/storage 11.57%; /glance 5.66%
OPENSTACK IN THE NEWS
The team at Mirantis published a new blog post today on deploying OpenStack on Fedora (http://mirantis.blogspot.com/2011/05/openstack-deployment-on-fedora-using.html). From the blog:
In this article, we discuss our approach to performing an Openstack installation on Fedora using our RPM repository and Kickstart. When we first started working with OpenStack, we found that the most popular platform for deploying OpenStack was Ubuntu, which seemed like a viable option for us, as there are packages for it available, as well as plenty of documentation. However, our internal infrastructure is running on Fedora, so instead of migrating the full infrastructure to Ubuntu, we decided to make OpenStack Fedora-friendly. The challenge in using Fedora, however, is that there aren’t any packages, nor is there much documentation available. Details of how we worked around these limitations are discussed below.
The complete blog post with detailed step by step directions at http://mirantis.blogspot.com/2011/05/openstack-deployment-on-fedora-using.html.
OpenStack Community Newsletter – May 13, 2011
This weekly newsletter is a way for the community to learn about all the various activities occurring on a weekly basis. If you would like to add content to a weekly update or have an idea about this newsletter, please email stephen.spector@openstack.org.
Developer Lounge at OpenStack Conference and Design Summit
HIGHLIGHTS
EVENTS
DEVELOPER COMMUNITY
GENERAL COMMUNITY
COMMUNITY STATISTICS (5/6– 5/12)
- Data Tracking Graphs – http://wiki.openstack.org/WeeklyNewsletter
- OpenStack Compute (NOVA) Data
- 41 Active Reviews
- 268 Active Branches – owned by 72 people & 14 teams
- 952 commits by 74 people in last month
- OpenStack Object Storage (SWIFT) Data
- 6 Active Reviews
- 63 Active Branches – owned by 21 people & 6 teams
- 164 commits by 16 people in last month
- OpenStack Image Registry (GLANCE) Data
- 3 Active Reviews
- 22 Active Branches – owned by 7 people & 4 teams
- 89 commits by 10 people in last month
- Twitter Stats for Week: #openstack 244 total tweets; OpenStack 1,122 total tweets (does not include RT)
- Bugs Stats for Week: 336 Tracked Bugs; 95 New Bugs; 44 In-process Bugs; 1 Critical Bugs; 17 High Importance Bugs; 179 Bugs (Fix Committed)
- Blueprints Stats for Week: 215 Blueprints; 15 Essential, 21 High, 14 Medium, 18 Low, 147 Undefined
- OpenStack Website Stats for Week: 15,167 Visits, 34,430 Pageviews, 58.69% New Visits
- Top 5 Pages: Home 41.94%; /projects 10.19%; /projects/compute 15.98%; /projects/storage 11.30%; /community 5.62%
OPENSTACK IN THE NEWS
A new OpenStack ecosystem participating company announced on Monday support for OpenStack Object Storage in their Open Cloud SaaS Platform and Cloud Appliance. Step by step directions with screen shots of this integration is available at http://smestorage.com/blog/?p=1558. A follow-up blog post details how to leverage a S3 API abstraction to access OpenStack Object Storage, http://smestorage.com/blog/?p=1575. Be sure to check out their solution and support our ecossytem solutions.
