OpenStack User Survey: October 2013

 

November 5, 2013

The OpenStack User Committee and Foundation staff conducted a survey of OpenStack cloud operators and end users, and are sharing the results with the community this week during the OpenStack Summit Hong Kong. The goal of the survey is to give users a strong voice in the community to share their technical requirements, feedback and best practices with the developers building OpenStack, as well as other cloud operators.

The survey generated 822 responses and catalogued 387 OpenStack cloud deployments across 56 countries.  A few key highlights:
  • More than half of the clouds were already running Grizzly or Havana 
  • The top five countries with deployments were U.S., India, China, France, and Canada
  • The top 3 business drivers were Cost Savings, Operational Efficiency, Open Platform
openstack-user-survey-infographic
You can find more detail in the full report by the User Committee.

 

Welcome new Gold Members Aptira, Hitachi, and Huawei!

 

November 4, 2013

The OpenStack Board of Directors approved Aptira, Hitachi and Huawei as Gold Members of the OpenStack Foundation. The companies are based in Australia/India, Japan and China respectively, and range from a startup to established, multinational corporations.

The timing couldn’t be better in my view, given that we are having our first ever Summit in Asia this week with attendees from 50 countries, including many from Australia, Japan, India, and China. As OpenStack adoption continues to accelerate around the globe, I am excited to welcome these new companies to the Gold Member ranks.

Some Background on the new members:

Aptira is a services business that focuses primarily on consulting, integration and training for OpenStack. Aptira has been instrumental in building the OpenStack community in Australia and India by organizing user groups, promotional activities and offering training courses. The company open sourced much of its training material and is collaborating across the community on broader education efforts.

Hitachi’s JP1 systems management solution supports OpenStack, and they’ve contributed support for their Hitachi Unified Storage platform for OpenStack Block Storage. The company also sponsors community building efforts in Japan, including an OpenStack event happening in Tokyo, February 2014.

Huawei is a top 20 OpenStack contributor that has contributed a Block Storage driver to support Huawei storage solutions, as well as made broader contributions to OpenStack documentation and testing systems. Huawei has supported community building efforts in China, including organizing meet ups and conferences, publishing whitepapers and blogs, and sponsoring and promoting the Summit this week.

Now let’s give each of the contributors from these companies a proper stacker welcome in Hong Kong this week!

@sparkycollier

 

OpenStack Community Weekly Newsletter (Oct 25 – Nov 1)

 

November 1, 2013

The Hong Kong Summit: Why I’m Excited

We asked our community why they’re looking forward to the OpenStack Summit in Hong Kong next week. We received a number of colorful responses and we’re sharing some of the best here. Have something to add?  Let us know why you’re excited for the Summit in the comments!

Reviewing how Blueprints are handled

OpenStack Compute Tech Lead Russell Bryant has triggered an important discussion on the OpenStack Development mailing list about the process to review blueprints. The Blueprints wiki page currently assigns to Project Tech Leads the task of assigning priority to the blueprints and Russell is suggesting that a wider group of people in the community shares such responsibility. Join the discussion on the development mailing list and in Hong Kong.

OpenStack “Core” and Interoperability

Have you been following the “what is core?” conversation since the “Incubation Update” committee completed its work some time ago? This discussion is going to be the big ticket item during next week’s board meeting. Mark McLoughlin shares his thoughts and a discussion derived from it on the OpenStack Foundation mailing list.

Tips ‘n Tricks

Upcoming Events

Reports from Previous Events

Other News

Welcome New Reviewers and Developers

Is your affiliation correct? Check your profile in the OpenStack Foundation Members Database!

Chandankumar, None Lana, Rackspace
Vinod Mangalpally, Rackspace Vladimir Vechkanov, Mirantis
Tim Freund, Missing email in profile Neo, None
Telles Mota Vidal Nóbrega, Distributed System Laboratory – LSD/UFCG Maxime Vidori, Enovace
Christian Strack, None Kai Zhang, Cisco
Hoisaleshwara Madan V S, Missing email in profile Ekaterina Fedorova, Mirantis
Daniel Korn, Missing email in profile Sushil Kumar, Globallogic
ChenZheng, IBM Olga Kopylova, None
Vipin Balachandran, VMware Krishna Raman, Multiple profile profile
Renat Akhmerov, Mirantis Diane Mueller, ActiveState Software
Adrian Otto, Rackspace Clayton Coleman, Red Hat
Sridhar S, None Blair Zajac, ?
Matthew Mosesohn, Multiple profile and profile Vipin Balachandran, VMware
Dzmitry Horbach, None Lars Butler, Rackspace
Brian DeHamer, HP Chandankumar, None
nikhil komawar, Rackspace Anastasia Karpinska, None
Joe Cruz, Rackspace
Terry Howe, HP
Phillipa Avery, Self
Michael Prokop, ?

Security Advisories

Latest Activity In Projects

Do you want to see at a glance the bugs filed and solved this week? Latest patches submitted for review? Check out the individual project pages on OpenStack Activity Board – Insights.

OpenStack Reactions

Missing the deadline

Missing the deadline sending a review after feature freeze

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The Hong Kong Summit: Why I’m Excited

 

October 31, 2013

Victoria_peak

We asked our community why they’re looking forward to the OpenStack Summit in Hong Kong next week. We received a number of colorful responses and we’re sharing some of the best here. Have something to add?  Let us know why you’re excited for the Summit in the comments below!

 

Terri Yu, @terrimyu

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1) Why are you excited for the Hong Kong Summit?

How can I not be excited, it’s my first software developer conference!! I just finished my Outreach Program for Women internship. I’ve never been to Hong Kong and my mom is from that area, so I get to visit lots of family & friends that I normally don’t get to see. Plus, I need an OpenStack t-shirt for my collection.  My utmost gratitude goes to the OpenStack Travel Fund for making all of this possible!

2) Which sessions are you not going to miss?

“Ceilometer+Heat=Alarming” and “Deploying and Training on OpenStack at MIT: Helping to Accelerate World-Class Research.” My internship mentor, Julien Danjou, is one of the speakers for the former, but I’m an MIT alum and have done a lot of scientific research in the past. So let’s call it a tie.

3) How will people recognize you at the Summit?

I’ll be carrying a thermos filled with yerba mate tea and wearing a black Patagonia fleece jacket over a nerdy or hockey t-shirt. I don’t have any OpenStack t-shirts yet, but some t-shirts I plan to bring: dog ate my homework, Museum of Mathematics, San Jose Sharks Hockey, “Eat More Kale”. I may wear my Québec Remparts hockey jersey at parties.

 

Raghavan ‘Rags’ Srinivas, @ragss

photo

1) Why are you excited for the Summit?

I think the summit has turned the corner. It seems more oriented towards using the stack not just developing it.

2) Which sessions are you most looking forward to?

The keynotes. And I’m naturally biased towards my talks: http://sched.co/1fzTrfq and http://sched.co/14Fd94P.

3) How will someone recognize you at the Summit?

My Indiana Jones hat.

 

Sven Michels, @geektoor

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1) What’s getting you excited about the Summit?

OpenStack is an amazing piece of software. Being part of a summit like this is also a guarantee to meet amazing people. It’s also my first trip that far away, so it’s a double excitement 🙂

2) Are you looking forward to any particular sessions?

No special session, I want to get inspired by the summit itself to pick the right ones. Main interest is security and availability.

3) How will people recognize you at the Summit?

Easy to notice me by my wheelchair and of course a tablet (and some USB power. In case someone runs out of power, just ask).

 

Brent Doncaster, @Brent_BWD

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1) Tell us why you’re excited about the Summit in Hong Kong.

It’s Hong Kong! Haven’t been back since ’89!. And it’s my first OpenStack Summit!

2) Which sessions are you looking forward to? Why?

Dell and InkTank Ceph – cuz its cool! 

2) What 3 things will you not be seen without?

Video camera, Dell log shirt, and a smile!

 

Flavio Percoco, @flaper87

Screen-Shot-2013-09-12-at-8.40.46-AM

1) Tell us why you’re excited for the OpenStack Summit?

Basically everything. I’m definitely most exited by the fact that it’ll be Marconi’s first summit!!!!!

2) Which sessions are you most looking forward to?

All Marconi, Oslo and Glance sessions, because those are the projects I’ve been working on in the last year. I’m also looking forward to some of the Release Management sessions, I see a lot of value in those for the whole project.

3) How will someone recognize you at the Summit? What 3 things will you not be seen without?

Huge smile, lot of excitement, rainbow sandals, shorts and I’ll be moving my hands Italian style. 😀

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Reviewing how Blueprints are handled

 

October 30, 2013

OpenStack Compute Tech Lead Russell Bryant has triggered an important discussion on the OpenStack Development mailing list about the process to review blueprints. The Blueprints wiki page currently assigns to Project Tech Leads the task of assigning priority to the blueprints and Russell is suggesting that a wider group of people in the community shares such responsibility..

Blueprints are used by project leaders to track development of significant features in all OpenStack programs: a blueprint is made of a title and a brief description, plus a URL to a wider description of architecture and specifications (usually a wiki or etherpad page).  Given the growing size of OpenStack code base, scaling development operations is increasingly hard and one person cannot handle reviewing all the proposed blueprints and set priorities in a way that guarantees finalization.

This brings us to the second issue that needs to be addressed: managing expectations of new contributors. With so many blueprints being proposed it’s hard for a PTL to be accountable for developers to deliver the code based on blueprint’s priorities. Since the PTL used to set the priority for the blueprint, it is hard to held him/her accountable when the code is not delivered accordingly. There is clearly a separation of powers between the person evaluating the blueprints, the developers that will implement them and the reviewers that will review the code submitted.

Russell’s proposal is to assign the responsibility to review the blueprints to the same team of people that will be responsible for reviewing and approving the code during the implementation phase, the core reviewers. The role of the PTL will still be to set the deadlines for the blueprints and to make sure that the roadmap for the program is sound. The core reviewers will then be sharing with the PTL the responsibility and accountability for the deliverables at each release milestone

In the discussion that’s following on the mailing list there are also proposals to include user input while setting the priorities for blueprints. There are risks also associated with this setup. So far, the process has been discussed only taking into account the needs of OpenStack Compute. The project is the largest OpenStack project by number of blueprints, making it the first to need reviewing the existing process. However, the expectation is that several other OpenStack projects may evolve to this point in the future and this is an important test for that time. As such, we welcome holistic feedback: join the discussion on the development mailing list and in Hong Kong.

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OpenStack Community Weekly Newsletter (Oct 18 – 25)

 

October 25, 2013

Register Now For The Summit in Hong Kong
在全体大会中将提供英文至中文之即时翻译。 要得到更多信息， 请查阅注册信息页

Solum: Open Development From Day One

Solum is a project designed to make cloud services easier to consume and integrate into your application development process. Solum begins as a shared vision, not a complete product. It’s a vision that a coalition of contributors believes in and wants to contribute to. For this to work, everything has to be designed and developed in the open from the very beginning. We’re taking the OpenStack commitment to core values of open development, open design and open community right to heart. Kudos to Rackspace, eBay, RedHat, Ubuntu/Canonical, dotCloud/Docker, Cloudsoft and Cumulogic for spearheading this effort.

An analysis of the Technical Committee election

Thierry Carrez played around with the ballots from the election of the Technical Committee. Since detailed ballot reporting was enabled in the past elections, it is possible to test alternative algorithms and run various analysis over the data set. As an official for this election, Thierry published his analysis of the results, hoping it will help in the current discussion on a potential evolution of the Foundation individual members voting system.

OpenStack Havana – the Quality Perspective

With Havana out in the wild, Sean Dague reviews the improvements made to the gating infrastructure during this release cycle. Beyond just increasing the number of tests we run, we made some changes in the nature of what we do in the gate. These changes are easy to overlook: Sean’s post gives a perspective in everything that’s going on behind the scenes when you try to land code in OpenStack.

Tips ‘n Tricks

Upcoming Events

Reports from Previous Events

Other News

Welcome New Developers

Is your affiliation correct? Check your profile in the OpenStack Foundation Members Database!

Got answers?

Ask OpenStack is the go-to destination for OpenStack users. Interesting questions waiting for answers:

Latest Activity In Projects

Do you want to see at a glance the bugs filed and solved this week? Latest patches submitted for review? Check out the individual project pages on OpenStack Activity Board – Insights.

OpenStack Reactions

When a PTL has been voted

The 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 leave a comment.

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Open Mic Spotlight: Alex Meade

 

October 24, 2013

alex_meade_faceThis post is part of the OpenStack Open Mic series to spotlight the people who have helped make OpenStack successful. Each week, a new contributor will step up to the mic and answer five questions about OpenStack, cloud, careers and what they do for fun. 

Alex Meade is a Software Developer at Rackspace and an aspiring software craftsman. He has been an OpenStack contributor since April 2011 and is currently a core reviewer on the Glance project. You can follow him on Twitter at @mralexmeade.

1. What do you think is the coolest thing that’s happened with OpenStack over the past three years?

The coolest thing has been it’s mad growth and adoption by so many cloud [providers, users, toolsets]. When I first started working on OpenStack, I had no idea how huge of a deal it would become and now it seems like everyone knows about it. I think when OpenStack nails down more features for cloud stability and interoperability, it’s going to take over the world.

2. What behavior has helped get you the furthest as a developer?

Always working on the hardest and most pressing tasks, not the tasks that just let me check something off my todo list but the ones that have me pulling my hair out constantly. I have a very long way to go as a software developer, despite not having much hair left to pull out.

3. What publications, blogs, mailing lists, etc do you read every day?

I can’t even pretend I read these everyday, but here are some resources I check out regularly:

Mailing lists/Digests:

Status Code – http://statuscode.org

Coder Weekly – http://www.coderweekly.com

Devops Weekly – http://devopsweekly.com

Blogs:

High Scalability – http://highscalability.com/

Mags:

IEEE Spectrum

IEEE Computer

4. How many OpenStack t-shirts do you own, and which is your favorite?

At least 15 that actually have OpenStack written on them, not counting that hoodie from San Diego. My favorite is the one that says “Free as in Beer, Speech, and Love” because it has had the most strangers say “nice shirt”.

5. Vulcan or Romulan?

Vulcan \\ //,

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OpenStack Community Weekly Newsletter (Oct 11 – 18)

 

October 18, 2013

Register Now For The Summit in Hong Kong
在全体大会中将提供英文至中文之即时翻译。 要得到更多信息， 请查阅注册信息页

OpenStack Havana is out

OpenStack Havana, the eighth release of the open source software for building public, private, and hybrid clouds, has nearly 400 new features to support software development, managing data and application infrastructure at scale. The OpenStack community continues to attract the best developers and experts in their disciplines with 910 individuals employed by 145 different organizations contributing to the Havana release. Learn all about Havana at the Hong Kong OpenStack Summit

Other news related to the Havana release

Technical Committee – October 2013 election results

Congratulations to the new TC. The following people are elected to one-year seats:

  • Monty Taylor
  • Russell Bryant
  • Anne Gentle
  • Mark McLoughlin
  • Doug Hellmann
  • Sean Dague

The following people are elected to six-month seats:

  • James E. Blair
  • Michael Still
  • John Griffith
  • Mark McClain
  • Robert Collins

They join Vishvananda Ishaya and Thierry Carrez in the Technical Committee that will oversee the Icehouse release cycle.

Tips ‘n Tricks

Upcoming Events

Reports from Previous Events

Other News

Welcome New Developers

Is your affiliation correct? Check your profile in the OpenStack Foundation Members Database!

Got answers?

Ask OpenStack is the go-to destination for OpenStack users. Interesting questions waiting for answers:

OpenStack Reactions

when I try to get an admin token as a user

The 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 leave a comment.

 

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Open Mic Spotlight: Dan Smith

 

October 17, 2013

9998950f4ac00c8f357d1f9640d4860eThis post is part of the OpenStack Open Mic series to spotlight the people who have helped make OpenStack successful. Each week, a new contributor will step up to the mic and answer five questions about OpenStack, cloud, careers and what they do for fun. 

Dan Smith is a Principal Software Engineer at Red Hat. He works primarily on Nova, is a member of the core team, and is generally focused on topics relating to live upgrade. You can follow him on Twitter @get_offmylawn. 

1. If you couldn’t be a developer, what would your dream job be?

I’ll try to answer this by quoting some code from dansmith.py:

try:

import developer

except ImportError:

raise Exception(“Cannot continue without the developer module!”)

2. What behavior has helped get you the furthest as a developer?

I’d say: Figuring out who the smart and productive folks are and learning to do as they do. OpenStack is a great project for that because it’s chock full of smart folks to learn from.

3. What is your favorite project that you’ve contributed code to?

It sounds contrived, but, definitely OpenStack. I can’t recall a past project that had me as motivated to review patches in the car on the way to a weekend vacation or rebase/resubmit my patches on a Saturday morning. The incredible velocity and high density of excellence on this project makes it fun. I feel privileged to be able to work on OpenStack for my day job.

4. How did you learn to code? Are you self-taught or did you learn in college? On-the-job?

When I was very young, I was given a Commodore VIC-20 with no game cartridges and some empty cassette tapes. It didn’t do much unless I made it happen, so I had to learn to write code for it. I still have the thing in the attic, but I keep the reference manual on the bookshelf with other technical books.

5. Be honest – are you more likely to know your project collaborators by their IRC nic or their actual name?

The only reason I know a few people by their actual names is because their IRC nicks haven’t been on the badges at recent design summits. I hope that will change in Hong Kong 🙂

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OpenStack Community Weekly Newsletter (Oct 4 – 11)

 

October 11, 2013

Register Now For The Summit in Hong Kong
在全体大会中将提供英文至中文之即时翻译。 要得到更多信息， 请查阅注册信息页

CoreOS, a good operating system for your OpenStack controllers

Sébastien Han explains why in his opinion CoreOS is an excellent operation system for your OpenStack controllers. Even if CoreOS is not mature enough to be put in production, the technology has a lot of advantages and features that are worth exploring.

The Growing Diversity inside OpenStack Object Storage

Of all OpenStack projects, Object Storage (also known as Swift) has always been considered mature or, in other words, a place where new things rarely happen. The good news is that a lot of exciting things are happening in Swift, specifically around the community participation and growing ecosystem.

Improving the OpenStack Documentation Build Tools

The tools for building and checking the OpenStack Documentation manuals has been improved with a few different options for fine-grained control. The new tools are run locally and as jenkins jobs allowing writers submitting a patch to get quickly an overview about what fails.

Tips ‘n Tricks

Upcoming Events

Reports from Previous Events

Other News

Welcome New Developers

Is your affiliation correct? Check your profile in the OpenStack Foundation Members Database!

Got answers?

Ask OpenStack is the go-to destination for OpenStack users. Interesting questions waiting for answers:

OpenStack Reactions

straight two +2 / approval in the same day

The 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 leave a comment.

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