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OpenStack is one of the largest open source efforts in the world, with a large infrastructure that is used to build, develop and test the cloud platform. As OpenStack continues to evolve, that infrastructure effort is now being rebranded as OpenDev.
In a session at the OpenStack Summit in Berlin, Germany last week, Clark Boylan, team lead for the OpenStack Infrastructure team, outlined how things are set to change as OpenStack moves beyond its core project to embrace a broader group of Open Infrastructure efforts.
“We basically act as beta testers for the infrastructure and make sure things work,” Boylan. “If it works for us, it’ll probably work for you, too.”
OpenDev
OpenStack as a platform is made up of multiple core projects, including Nova compute, Swift Storage, Neutron networking, Horizon dashboard and Keystone authentication among others. Beyond the core projects, OpenStack also had a group of projects under the Stackforge umbrella name, where other non-OpenStack cloud efforts were hosted.
The OpenStack Foundation has now launched new projects that include Kata Containers, StarlingX edge, Airship deployment and Zuul CI/CD, each of which will get their separate area for hosting project and all their required infrastructure.
“We are not calling the infrastructure OpenStack, to make it clear that it is not OpenStack,” Boylan said. “The next evolution of this is what we’re calling OpenDev.”
Boylan said the OpenDev effort will enable the OpenStack Infrastructure team to host all the additional projects under a neutrally branded domain, with their own services.
“In that way it’s clear that OpenStack is no longer special when it comes to the Infrastructure team,” Boylan said. “Effectively, we will become the OpenDev infrastructure team rather than the OpenStack Infrastructure team.”
While OpenDev makes OpenStack “less special,” Boylan said he doesn’t expect OpenStack to go anywhere, and it will still be the largest user of OpenDev’s services. The transition to OpenDev will be a slow one, according to Boylan, since the infrastructure team doesn’t want to break anything. As such, only one or two services at a time will transition to the new OpenDev model.
Config Management
The OpenStack Infrastructure team had been using the Puppet configuration system as its core tool, but it’s currently in a process of migrating away from Puppet. Boyle noted that OpenStack had been using the Puppet 3.x release, and migrating to the newer 5.x update is a non-trivial and costly task.
He added that in recent years, the interest of the infrastructure team has shifted to other tools, most notably the Ansible config management system. As part of the shift, the infrastructure team is also looking to use containers for packaging of different services.
Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at ServerWatch and InternetNews.com. Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist.
