Mailing List Archive: OpenStack: Operators

Newbie Question - Can I interface with open stack providers from my desktop?

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misteritguru at gmx

Aug 12, 2012, 4:57 PM

Post #1 of 7 (354 views)
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Newbie Question - Can I interface with open stack providers from my desktop?

Good Morning Open Stack People,

Please forgive this naive question.

I've been trying to follow Open Stack, and to be honest, I think it's pretty awesome. From my understanding of Horizon, it's a dashboard for controlling the features of the stack as a whole. I can't help but thinking that, that's great for managing my own private setup - But can I use it to interface with a third party implementation - for example, My Rack Space account? And if not why not!!! (Just kidding). If this is off topic for the list, then I'm sorry, but my mind keeps racing as I think of the possibilities. If I'm off target, or if this is not the aim of Horizon, then I think I'll be a bit disappointed. I've been following this project since it was announced just to see the day where I can run my own cloud from an old crusty pentium laptop with 512MB of memory!!

Thanks!

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trey at maldivica

Aug 13, 2012, 2:17 PM

Post #2 of 7 (333 views)
Permalink

Re: Newbie Question - Can I interface with open stack providers from my desktop? [In reply to]

I'm not sure if Horizon will support this, although if the cloud provider's
APIs are standard, it might be possible to set up Horizon and point it at
the provider's endpoints.

However, why would you want to do this? If we're talking Rackspace or HP,
they have consoles which appear to give you the same basic functionality as
Horizon. Right now you should be able to "run [your] own cloud from an old
crusty pentium laptop with 512MB of memory." Am I missing something?

On Sun, Aug 12, 2012 at 7:57 PM, Mr IT Guru <misteritguru [at] gmx> wrote:

> Good Morning Open Stack People,
>
> Please forgive this naive question.
>
> I've been trying to follow Open Stack, and to be honest, I think it's
> pretty awesome. From my understanding of Horizon, it's a dashboard for
> controlling the features of the stack as a whole. I can't help but thinking
> that, that's great for managing my own private setup - But can I use it to
> interface with a third party implementation - for example, My Rack Space
> account? And if not why not!!! (Just kidding). If this is off topic for the
> list, then I'm sorry, but my mind keeps racing as I think of the
> possibilities. If I'm off target, or if this is not the aim of Horizon,
> then I think I'll be a bit disappointed. I've been following this project
> since it was announced just to see the day where I can run my own cloud
> from an old crusty pentium laptop with 512MB of memory!!
>
> Thanks!
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> OpenStack-operators mailing list
> OpenStack-operators [at] lists
> http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-operators
>

--
*Trey Duskin*
Dir. of Technical Services, Maldivica
404.955.7490 (c)
www.maldivica.com

matt at nycresistor

Aug 13, 2012, 5:12 PM

Post #3 of 7 (332 views)
Permalink

Re: Newbie Question - Can I interface with open stack providers from my desktop? [In reply to]

It's an interesting use case. I mean in theory horizon can do EXACTLY
this. Because it understands ACLs all it really needs is access to
the API endpoints.... which keystone's directory service should
provide.

And that means...

A user who has openstack tm compatible images running on a variety of
clouds could provide a unified web interface on all those clouds
rather than relying on white labeled / customized interfaces. I could
see this as a legitimate use case for hybrid cloud deployments.

It's interesting to consider that sort of use case. Never thought of
doing it myself. A little bit inception like.

-Matt

On Mon, Aug 13, 2012 at 2:17 PM, Trey Duskin <trey [at] maldivica> wrote:
> I'm not sure if Horizon will support this, although if the cloud provider's
> APIs are standard, it might be possible to set up Horizon and point it at
> the provider's endpoints.
>
> However, why would you want to do this? If we're talking Rackspace or HP,
> they have consoles which appear to give you the same basic functionality as
> Horizon. Right now you should be able to "run [your] own cloud from an old
> crusty pentium laptop with 512MB of memory." Am I missing something?
>
>
> On Sun, Aug 12, 2012 at 7:57 PM, Mr IT Guru <misteritguru [at] gmx> wrote:
>>
>> Good Morning Open Stack People,
>>
>> Please forgive this naive question.
>>
>> I've been trying to follow Open Stack, and to be honest, I think it's
>> pretty awesome. From my understanding of Horizon, it's a dashboard for
>> controlling the features of the stack as a whole. I can't help but thinking
>> that, that's great for managing my own private setup - But can I use it to
>> interface with a third party implementation - for example, My Rack Space
>> account? And if not why not!!! (Just kidding). If this is off topic for the
>> list, then I'm sorry, but my mind keeps racing as I think of the
>> possibilities. If I'm off target, or if this is not the aim of Horizon, then
>> I think I'll be a bit disappointed. I've been following this project since
>> it was announced just to see the day where I can run my own cloud from an
>> old crusty pentium laptop with 512MB of memory!!
>>
>> Thanks!
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> OpenStack-operators mailing list
>> OpenStack-operators [at] lists
>> http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-operators
>
>
>
>
> --
> Trey Duskin
> Dir. of Technical Services, Maldivica
> 404.955.7490 (c)
> www.maldivica.com
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> OpenStack-operators mailing list
> OpenStack-operators [at] lists
> http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-operators
>

_______________________________________________
OpenStack-operators mailing list
OpenStack-operators [at] lists
http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-operators

brian.schott at nimbisservices

Aug 14, 2012, 6:59 AM

Post #4 of 7 (329 views)
Permalink

Re: Newbie Question - Can I interface with open stack providers from my desktop? [In reply to]

I remember this being raised in the Horizon session at the last summit. It's theoretically possible with some code refactoring, but there are several issues that would have to be addressed.

1. The Horizon auth system is tied to Keystone, so that means you have to login N times or build an supplementary auth system that holds those multiple keystone credentials on behalf of the user.
2. Horizon is essentially stateless, so every interaction with Horizon involves one or more round-trip queries through the OS API service. Trying to do N queries during the span of a web GET or POST context will run the risk of timing out, not to mention the fun of handling "partial" errors if one of the queries fails.
3. It would break a lot of Horizon interfaces. There are ambiguities in some of the panel controls where the semantics wouldn't be clear where an action should happen. Create a security group? On which cloud(s)? A browser-side approach like ElasticFox is easier where you just pull down and work with one cloud at a time, but providing a seamless view that also gives the user control is hard.

In short, the core panels could be repurposed but a lot of the plumbing would have to be refactored. Also, there are many unified cloud interfaces out there that support OpenStack: JCloud, CloudStack, RightScale to name a few.

Brian

---------------------------------------------
Brian Schott, CTO
Nimbis Services, Inc.
brian.schott [at] nimbisservices
ph: 443-274-6064 fx: 443-274-6060

On Aug 13, 2012, at 8:12 PM, Matt Joyce <matt [at] nycresistor> wrote:

> It's an interesting use case. I mean in theory horizon can do EXACTLY
> this. Because it understands ACLs all it really needs is access to
> the API endpoints.... which keystone's directory service should
> provide.
>
> And that means...
>
> A user who has openstack tm compatible images running on a variety of
> clouds could provide a unified web interface on all those clouds
> rather than relying on white labeled / customized interfaces. I could
> see this as a legitimate use case for hybrid cloud deployments.
>
> It's interesting to consider that sort of use case. Never thought of
> doing it myself. A little bit inception like.
>
> -Matt
>
> On Mon, Aug 13, 2012 at 2:17 PM, Trey Duskin <trey [at] maldivica> wrote:
>> I'm not sure if Horizon will support this, although if the cloud provider's
>> APIs are standard, it might be possible to set up Horizon and point it at
>> the provider's endpoints.
>>
>> However, why would you want to do this? If we're talking Rackspace or HP,
>> they have consoles which appear to give you the same basic functionality as
>> Horizon. Right now you should be able to "run [your] own cloud from an old
>> crusty pentium laptop with 512MB of memory." Am I missing something?
>>
>>
>> On Sun, Aug 12, 2012 at 7:57 PM, Mr IT Guru <misteritguru [at] gmx> wrote:
>>>
>>> Good Morning Open Stack People,
>>>
>>> Please forgive this naive question.
>>>
>>> I've been trying to follow Open Stack, and to be honest, I think it's
>>> pretty awesome. From my understanding of Horizon, it's a dashboard for
>>> controlling the features of the stack as a whole. I can't help but thinking
>>> that, that's great for managing my own private setup - But can I use it to
>>> interface with a third party implementation - for example, My Rack Space
>>> account? And if not why not!!! (Just kidding). If this is off topic for the
>>> list, then I'm sorry, but my mind keeps racing as I think of the
>>> possibilities. If I'm off target, or if this is not the aim of Horizon, then
>>> I think I'll be a bit disappointed. I've been following this project since
>>> it was announced just to see the day where I can run my own cloud from an
>>> old crusty pentium laptop with 512MB of memory!!
>>>
>>> Thanks!
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> OpenStack-operators mailing list
>>> OpenStack-operators [at] lists
>>> http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-operators
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Trey Duskin
>> Dir. of Technical Services, Maldivica
>> 404.955.7490 (c)
>> www.maldivica.com
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> OpenStack-operators mailing list
>> OpenStack-operators [at] lists
>> http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-operators
>>
>
> _______________________________________________
> OpenStack-operators mailing list
> OpenStack-operators [at] lists
> http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-operators

_______________________________________________
OpenStack-operators mailing list
OpenStack-operators [at] lists
http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-operators

misteritguru at gmx

Aug 18, 2012, 3:08 AM

Post #5 of 7 (306 views)
Permalink

Re: Newbie Question - Can I interface with open stack providers from my desktop? [In reply to]

Good Morning All!

On 13 Aug 2012, at 22:17, Trey Duskin <trey [at] maldivica> wrote:

> I'm not sure if Horizon will support this, although if the cloud provider's APIs are standard, it might be possible to set up Horizon and point it at the provider's endpoints.

I would love to have this functionality - It means I don't have to purchase and configure bare metal to get systems up and running, just sign up for an account. It's like getting a time share to fly the enterprise, when all you own is a shuttle :)

>
> However, why would you want to do this? If we're talking Rackspace or HP, they have consoles which appear to give you the same basic functionality as Horizon. Right now you should be able to "run [your] own cloud from an old crusty pentium laptop with 512MB of memory." Am I missing something?

Call it my ego - It's one thing to ask a web interface to do something, your limited by the providers imagination. It's quite another to send those commands yourself. I'd feel a lot more confident knowing that I can implement my own work flows, and also apply them to any other provider I use. I think it's more of a comfort thing. If it breaks, I know that it's my fault, but the feeling of redundancy being able to 'cut and paste' my environment - I think that's a feature worth having

_______________________________________________
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OpenStack-operators [at] lists
http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-operators

misteritguru at gmx

Aug 18, 2012, 3:21 AM

Post #6 of 7 (306 views)
Permalink

Re: Newbie Question - Can I interface with open stack providers from my desktop? [In reply to]

Good Morning Matt,

Thanks for your reply.

On 14 Aug 2012, at 01:12, Matt Joyce <matt [at] nycresistor> wrote:

> It's an interesting use case. I mean in theory horizon can do EXACTLY
> this. Because it understands ACLs all it really needs is access to
> the API endpoints.... which keystone's directory service should
> provide.
>

Brilliant, my spirits are rising! I would like to use ACLs to provide my developers with access to a test lab in the cloud. That way they can test in the real world, get real world performance in terms of speed and such. It also means that they can spin up what ever image they have access to, without bothering me! It also means that I only have to deal with their final configurations. No more help desk calls because some 'dev' issued the shutdown instead of reboot command!

> And that means...
>
> A user who has openstack tm compatible images running on a variety of
> clouds could provide a unified web interface on all those clouds
> rather than relying on white labeled / customized interfaces. I could
> see this as a legitimate use case for hybrid cloud deployments.
>

Thank you!! This is the angle I see it from. When deployments get to a certain size, like 100 nodes, you don't want to rely on just one provider, for the same reason that we have dual internet lines in our offices. It's just not a comfortable feeling. That said, you don't really want to have to update 5 different departments on where their actual machines are.

"What do you mean we're on EC2? I've been telling every one we're on rack space?!" - "What, only the lab is on rack space? But the EC2 CentOS image is different!? We need EPEL, dammit - we just updated the DNS! switch back, switch back! (Actual conversation I had!) One Hybrid interface would have prevented that!

> It's interesting to consider that sort of use case. Never thought of
> doing it myself. A little bit inception like.
>

Thanks for thinking about this case - I hadn't given much thought to a web interface. I'm assuming that horizon can be controlled by a web front end? If so �. and now I'm getting excited - It shouldn't be too hard to plug into a workflow engine. I can imagine giving management a web page with a big red start button, and telling them that only their username and password, (from LDAP, naturally), can fire up their spanking new cloud based CRM/website/whatever , that should score some brownie points!

> -Matt
>
> On Mon, Aug 13, 2012 at 2:17 PM, Trey Duskin <trey [at] maldivica> wrote:
>> I'm not sure if Horizon will support this, although if the cloud provider's
>> APIs are standard, it might be possible to set up Horizon and point it at
>> the provider's endpoints.
>>
>> However, why would you want to do this? If we're talking Rackspace or HP,
>> they have consoles which appear to give you the same basic functionality as
>> Horizon. Right now you should be able to "run [your] own cloud from an old
>> crusty pentium laptop with 512MB of memory." Am I missing something?
>>
>>
>> On Sun, Aug 12, 2012 at 7:57 PM, Mr IT Guru <misteritguru [at] gmx> wrote:
>>>
>>> Good Morning Open Stack People,
>>>
>>> Please forgive this naive question.
>>>
>>> I've been trying to follow Open Stack, and to be honest, I think it's
>>> pretty awesome. From my understanding of Horizon, it's a dashboard for
>>> controlling the features of the stack as a whole. I can't help but thinking
>>> that, that's great for managing my own private setup - But can I use it to
>>> interface with a third party implementation - for example, My Rack Space
>>> account? And if not why not!!! (Just kidding). If this is off topic for the
>>> list, then I'm sorry, but my mind keeps racing as I think of the
>>> possibilities. If I'm off target, or if this is not the aim of Horizon, then
>>> I think I'll be a bit disappointed. I've been following this project since
>>> it was announced just to see the day where I can run my own cloud from an
>>> old crusty pentium laptop with 512MB of memory!!
>>>
>>> Thanks!
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> OpenStack-operators mailing list
>>> OpenStack-operators [at] lists
>>> http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-operators
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Trey Duskin
>> Dir. of Technical Services, Maldivica
>> 404.955.7490 (c)
>> www.maldivica.com
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> OpenStack-operators mailing list
>> OpenStack-operators [at] lists
>> http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-operators
>>

_______________________________________________
OpenStack-operators mailing list
OpenStack-operators [at] lists
http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-operators

misteritguru at gmx

Aug 18, 2012, 3:46 AM

Post #7 of 7 (309 views)
Permalink

Re: Newbie Question - Can I interface with open stack providers from my desktop? [In reply to]

On 14 Aug 2012, at 14:59, Brian Schott <brian.schott [at] nimbisservices> wrote:

> I remember this being raised in the Horizon session at the last summit. It's theoretically possible with some code refactoring, but there are several issues that would have to be addressed.
>
> 1. The Horizon auth system is tied to Keystone, so that means you have to login N times or build an supplementary auth system that holds those multiple keystone credentials on behalf of the user.

I thought about keystone - and on reading this, I think I've misunderstood how it functions. I thought that being an authentication proxy, (please correct me if I'm wrong, I'd like to learn), it would be the job of my keystone box to authenticate with my providers on behalf on my horizon setup - and get a 'temporary token' back so that it (horizon) can speak to the Nova Box my provider has. Read that last sentence twice, even I'm confused a bit.

> 2. Horizon is essentially stateless, so every interaction with Horizon involves one or more round-trip queries through the OS API service. Trying to do N queries during the span of a web GET or POST context will run the risk of timing out, not to mention the fun of handling "partial" errors if one of the queries fails.

I've just had a thought � am I blurring the line between dashboard, and control panel here? If horizon is stateless - then for each refresh it's going to fetch the data in real time, right? In that case, I can see the potential problems.

> 3. It would break a lot of Horizon interfaces. There are ambiguities in some of the panel controls where the semantics wouldn't be clear where an action should happen. Create a security group? On which cloud(s)? A browser-side approach like ElasticFox is easier where you just pull down and work with one cloud at a time, but providing a seamless view that also gives the user control is hard.

I had assumed that horizon would poll the different parts of the infrastructure, and store that data locally, maybe in a MySQL database, and then use that status information to provide a dashboard to the user, with user authentication via keystone, so that particular user only gets the info, and the ability to issue commands to the parts he has access to.

>
> In short, the core panels could be repurposed but a lot of the plumbing would have to be refactored. Also, there are many unified cloud interfaces out there that support OpenStack: JCloud, CloudStack, RightScale to name a few.
>
> Brian
>
> ---------------------------------------------
> Brian Schott, CTO
> Nimbis Services, Inc.
> brian.schott [at] nimbisservices
> ph: 443-274-6064 fx: 443-274-6060
>

I'll take a look at those unifying cloud interfaces you've mentioned. /* my opinion - it would improve the OOTB experience if some sort of unifying cloud interface came too � hint hint! */

>
>
> On Aug 13, 2012, at 8:12 PM, Matt Joyce <matt [at] nycresistor> wrote:
>
>> It's an interesting use case. I mean in theory horizon can do EXACTLY
>> this. Because it understands ACLs all it really needs is access to
>> the API endpoints.... which keystone's directory service should
>> provide.
>>
>> And that means...
>>
>> A user who has openstack tm compatible images running on a variety of
>> clouds could provide a unified web interface on all those clouds
>> rather than relying on white labeled / customized interfaces. I could
>> see this as a legitimate use case for hybrid cloud deployments.
>>
>> It's interesting to consider that sort of use case. Never thought of
>> doing it myself. A little bit inception like.
>>
>> -Matt
>>
>> On Mon, Aug 13, 2012 at 2:17 PM, Trey Duskin <trey [at] maldivica> wrote:
>>> I'm not sure if Horizon will support this, although if the cloud provider's
>>> APIs are standard, it might be possible to set up Horizon and point it at
>>> the provider's endpoints.
>>>
>>> However, why would you want to do this? If we're talking Rackspace or HP,
>>> they have consoles which appear to give you the same basic functionality as
>>> Horizon. Right now you should be able to "run [your] own cloud from an old
>>> crusty pentium laptop with 512MB of memory." Am I missing something?
>>>
>>>
>>> On Sun, Aug 12, 2012 at 7:57 PM, Mr IT Guru <misteritguru [at] gmx> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Good Morning Open Stack People,
>>>>
>>>> Please forgive this naive question.
>>>>
>>>> I've been trying to follow Open Stack, and to be honest, I think it's
>>>> pretty awesome. From my understanding of Horizon, it's a dashboard for
>>>> controlling the features of the stack as a whole. I can't help but thinking
>>>> that, that's great for managing my own private setup - But can I use it to
>>>> interface with a third party implementation - for example, My Rack Space
>>>> account? And if not why not!!! (Just kidding). If this is off topic for the
>>>> list, then I'm sorry, but my mind keeps racing as I think of the
>>>> possibilities. If I'm off target, or if this is not the aim of Horizon, then
>>>> I think I'll be a bit disappointed. I've been following this project since
>>>> it was announced just to see the day where I can run my own cloud from an
>>>> old crusty pentium laptop with 512MB of memory!!
>>>>
>>>> Thanks!
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> OpenStack-operators mailing list
>>>> OpenStack-operators [at] lists
>>>> http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-operators
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Trey Duskin
>>> Dir. of Technical Services, Maldivica
>>> 404.955.7490 (c)
>>> www.maldivica.com
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> OpenStack-operators mailing list
>>> OpenStack-operators [at] lists
>>> http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-operators
>>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> OpenStack-operators mailing list
>> OpenStack-operators [at] lists
>> http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-operators
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> OpenStack-operators mailing list
> OpenStack-operators [at] lists
> http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-operators

_______________________________________________
OpenStack-operators mailing list
OpenStack-operators [at] lists
http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-operators

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