Files
governance/reference/upstream-investment-opportunities/2018/designate.rst
Zane Bitter 93acffc3b8 Convert 'Help Most Needed' to 'Upstream Investment Opportunities'
The previous 'Help Most Needed' list was presenting information in a way
that focused on the desires of the community rather than the value that
sponsoring organisations can generate - for both themselves and the
commons. Replace the list with a new list of 'Upstream Investment
Opportunities', and a process to keep them current by removing them
after they have been on the list for between 6 months and a year, so
that the submitter is forced to reaffirm their interest and the TC is
forced to re-evaluate the relevancy.

Since the current 'Help Most Needed' entries are generally not written
in a style emphasising the value to a business of investing, the initial
list is empty and will be filled as the TC evaluates business cases
according to its new criteria and understanding of the needs of
potential contributing organisations.

To preserve the existing information, the contents of the current 'Help
Most Needed' list appear as the 2018 upstream investment opportunites.
Links to the old list will temporarily redirect here until such time as
the new entries are in place, at which point we can redirect to the main
page with the latest index.

Change-Id: I65fef701dc2e3d50aa84e7ee79b068c78346c846
2019-06-27 11:16:53 -04:00

4.5 KiB

Designate Contributors

Description

Designate is a service that manages DNS Zones and Recordsets. It supports multiple DNS Servers, and DNS Service Providers, making it vital for any network or web-based application.

They need contributors to help find and fix bugs, develop new features, and help maintain the quality of the project, including cross-project initiatives. Designate is quite stable, with any new features requiring long term planning, design, and phased implementation.

Designate welcomes everyone, from someone starting in the community to senior contributors who want new, interesting problems to tackle. Contributors will get to work on a project that will be a central part of any OpenStack deployment and work on a project that needs to scale from a small single node install to a system controlling DNS servers worldwide.

Value

Flexibility

DNS is fundamental in gracefully directing users and applications to services. It allows the flexibility to replace underlying hardware while presenting consumers with a consistent endpoint. Designate provides this flexibility to operators and end users.

Designate supports a wide range of drivers for various DNS servers and providers, which allows deployers to integrate Designate into pre-existing DNS infrastructures.

Self-Service

Self-serviceability is a core tenet of OpenStack technical vision. Designate helps OpenStack clouds adhere to that principle by exposing DNS functionality directly to end-users. Designate allows cloud operators to delegate the control of DNS zones to end users, to avoid complex ticket based workflows for DNS updates.

User Experience

When end users are building applications in a cloud native way, relying on external tooling to provision DNS entries adds complexity. With the advancement of IPv6, services required to have DNS entries, to avoid application user confusion.

Designate adds an important part of the value add for cloud infrastructure, and ensures that OpenStack has feature parity with other cloud providers.

Integrations

Designate integrates with many other tools to allow for zero touch management of DNS Zones and Records. The integration with neutron allows admins to have PTR records (for reverse DNS lookups) managed for Floating IP ranges, without giving direct privileged access to the reverse zone to users.

Tools like letsencrypt certbot allow for auto provisioning of SSL certs using DNS-01 validation, while tools like Heat, Terraform and Ansible allow for the provisioning of DNS Zones and Records to be integrated into pre-existing workflows for applications.

Kubernetes external-dns support adds simple annotation based DNS management for applications running in kubernetes clusters with load balancers or ingress support.

Consistency

The OpenStack community continues to evolve, and this evolution requires large cross-project initiatives. Furthermore, users and operators expect consistency across the OpenStack platform. Examples from recent history include OpenStack-wide support for Python 3 and easing operator pain by moving policy configuration into code. Ensuring Designate stays up-to-date with these initiatives is imperative in reducing operational costs, complexity, and user frustration.

Contact

If you are interested, please join #openstack-dns on Freenode or contact the Designate PTL (Graham Hayes - mugsie), the Technical Committee sponsor (TBD). You may also email the openstack discuss mailing list with the tag [designate] in the subject.