OpsTools
SIG Status: Approved
Current Steering Committee Chair: MatthiasRunge
Board Member Helping Bootstrap: KaranbirSingh
1. Goals
The SIG will provide tools for operators, system administrators, devops and developers doing infrastructure engineering on content based on CentOS Linux. We will aim to support the Config Management SIG ( https://wiki.centos.org/SpecialInterestGroup/ConfigManagementSIG ) and repurpose their content as and when needed in our space.
Initial stacks we would like to bootstrap with:
- Performance monitoring: collectd - graphite - grafana
- Availability monitoring: sensu - uchiwa
- Centralised logging: fluentd - elasticsearch - kibana
The SIG will provide packages and package repos, containers, and testing/CI, including integration testing with other SIGs (e.g. test monitoring and collecting logs from Cloud and PaaS deployments).
Additional output is to provide best practice recipes in form of automation manifests ( puppet and ansible to start with ) to get things quicker up and running and to get a useful output, and to integrate with the installers for other projects e.g. Cloud SIG uses puppet, PaaS SIG uses ansible.
The OpsTools SIG will work with the other SIGs on integration with their projects, and will implement best practices recommendations from other SIGs (e.g. make sure the SIG's configuration uses the best practice recommendations from the ConfigManagement SIG).
We are currently in contact with persons from Zabbix and Syslog-NG to discuss and improve a collaboration with the SIG.
2. Deliverables
The output of OpsTools SIG will consist of
- Packages : We will aim to primarily support the core functionality we deliver from the SIG repos, all content needed as dependencies and support will be imported from related SIG's or EPEL. The dependency content will have a much lower attention rate from our side, relying on the originating repos to patch, upgrade and bugfix as needed.
- Documentation including quick start guides on wiki.centos.org
- Integration bits, like ansible playbooks and puppet manifests
- Containers and pre-built images as needed
A second aspect of the SIG's delivery will be to engage with the various authors who write this software as a part of the upstream, and help them deliver a good user experience on CentOS Linux, as well as help them with life cycle issues as and when they come up. We will also aim to bridge the CentOS userbase into these upstream communities.
Our content will follow the established model, wherein content is built and tag'd as Candidate, once approved by the contributor, we will tag all content as 'Testing' allowing it to then be promoted towards an early adopter, tester, developer audience. Once an acceptable test level is reached without issues, we will tag content for 'Release'. At this time, its available for other SIGs to consume, and available on user machines etc.
Released packages are available after adding the release repository via yum install centos-release-opstools.
3. Mailing List and Communication
Preferred coordination and communication is using centos-devel@centos.org or using #centos-devel on irc.Libera.chat. For emails, please consider to tag the mail by adding [OpsTools] to the subject. In the future, if the volume of conversation goes up to a point where its a distraction, we might request our own dedicated mailing list.
We might also request that major announcements like version update and events are announced via the official CentOS formats, including the announce list, social media, irc and other related venues.
We shall also aim to ensure all releases and announcements are pushed via upstream venues, specially those that represent the content being released.
4. Contribution
Packages are collected in https://github.com/centos-opstools - we will try and maintain the github presence as a way for people to easily contribute in. Once git.centos.org is online and able to support us, we will move our canonical upstream into git.centos.org and setup relevant mirrors / admins to help bridge content.
Documentation is collected at https://github.com/centos-opstools/opstools-doc
- Packages have to pass an initial review to prevent distributing copyrighted material. We will try our best to enforce the Fedora packaging guidelines, as they are well thought through and extensively maintained.
- Packagers are expected to engage and to collaborate with upstream; Ideally packagers are upstream committers.
Contributions to opstools have to go through git reviews on https://review.rdoproject.org/r/ . The repositories on https://github.com/centos-opstools/ contain a corresponding configuration file. The workflow is the same as in OpenStack. For more info, see https://docs.openstack.org/contributors/code-and-documentation/using-gerrit.html . Discussions around features or bugs should be raised via centos-devel list, in order to get maximum exposure and attention.
5. Resource requests
We will request resources as and when needed, however to start up we would want :
- access to generate SIG tags on cbs.centos.org
- ability for the entire SIG members to push packages to cbs.centos.org
- ability to build delivery artifacts ( packages, docs, containers etc )
- ability to engage with the CentOS community at large, via established and new venues
- Support CentOS Dojo's via participation, content and help with running them
- lists, source hosting, rpm hosting, space on mirror.centos.org and buildlogs.centos.org as needed
- ability to leverage established and future relationships that the CentOS Project develops with vendors and ecosystems / verticals.
6. SIG Membership
There will be a core set of admins in our steering committee, who will verify all further requests to join the SIG and a series of committers. Admins might change in due course, and we will aim to maintain a low barrier for commit access. All authorisations will run via accounts.centos.org.
For persons interested in contributing to the SIG, please send a mail to the centos-devel mailing list and announce your interest. We also host regular weekly meetings, please join the meeting. You should be able to see our meeting schedule at https://www.centos.org/community/calendar
The steering committee now consists of:
MatthiasRunge
RichMegginson
KaranbirSingh
MartinMagr
Commit access (addition, removal) to the repositories will be decided in the regular meetings. The steering committee will remove inactive contributors in regular meetings. Persons with no contribution for more than 180 days are assumed to be inactive.
The Steering Committee Chairperson should be elected by the group of committers, same goes for the steering committee.
7. Meetings
What format, where, and what time do the regular meetings take place?
IRC meeting, channel #centos-devel, weekly meeting (until chosen otherwise). We will decide on a day and time once approved and publish to the CentOS calendar.
8. Roadmap and (Action) TODO List
a set of package specs is available at https://github.com/centos-opstools
improve documentation, available at https://github.com/centos-opstools/opstools-doc
improve ansible playbooks, available at https://github.com/centos-opstools/opstools-ansible
- establish CI
9. Important Note
The Ops Tools efforts started within the Cloud SIG, wherein it was seen to target a wider audience and therefore decided to move into its own SIG. However, we do have content that was built into the Cloud SIG Tags on cbs.centos.org. Once approved, we will work on moving / removing / re-tagging that content to better reflect its new origin.