Managing clouds with a web console is tedious if you have many repetetive tasks. Automation is key. Luckily we have the APIs and CLIs for that. But is that really sufficient?
The OpenStack-SDK is way more than just a Python library mapping API calls. This talk explains its architecture and reveals some features only known to a few users and developers. We continue explaining the cloud and the resource layer of the SDK. We have a deeper look into credential management which supports both environment variables and files. While this appears to look very simple, there are some pitfalls if you're about to deal with users, domains, or projects.
We also cover vendor profiles that simplify user's configuration efforts, have a look into the extension hook enabling individual add-ons on SDK level, and briefly touch the SDKs relationship to the OpenStack client, a. k. a. the CLI. One of its latest features is a connectors to monitoring systems like Telegraf and Prometheus.
This talk is not only for Python programmers, but useful for any devops, who considers attaching a tool like a configuration management system, some orchestration framework, or a CI/CD pipeline to OpenStack. Developers and users of other languages are also invited to participate in the lessons learned, while developing the SDK.
