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governance/reference/base-services.rst
Davanum Srinivas 9ad8f55ce8 Etcd as a base service
There have been a lot of discussions around scenarios like
distributed locks, storing additional configuration information
and coordinating service liveness checks without using a database
etc. Example:
http://lists.openstack.org/pipermail/openstack-dev/2015-November/thread.html#78214
http://lists.openstack.org/pipermail/openstack-dev/2017-March/thread.html#113941
http://lists.openstack.org/pipermail/openstack-dev/2017-March/thread.html#113885

So at the Boston Summit Forum, we had a session on a specific proposal
to consider Etcd 3.x for such scenarios:
https://etherpad.openstack.org/p/BOS-etcd-base-service

There was consensus in the room based on which a bunch of work
was done in tooz, devstack etc after thorough research on the
options available for both eventlet and non-eventlet based services.

The consensus grew around folks using oslo library like tooz or if
they choose, they can directly use etcd using python client
libraries like etcd3 (for non-eventlet scenarios) and etcd3gw (for
eventlet based scenarios). We should be using the v3 APIs using
the etcd 3.1.x versions to avoid migration issues from the older
v2 APIs.

Change-Id: Id6dd2a8fffd50dca8f0de05def20d31bf9c61717
2017-05-24 14:44:22 +00:00

2.2 KiB

Base services

Definition

Base services are services that OpenStack components can assume will be present in any OpenStack deployment. OpenStack components may therefore leverage advanced features exposed by those base services without fear of increasing the overall operational complexity for OpenStack deployers.

Current list of base services

An oslo.db-compatible database

OpenStack components store data in a database, using oslo.db as an indirection layer. While most OpenStack deployments use MySQL, other databases are supported.

An oslo.messaging-compatible message queue

Some inter-process and inter-service communication in OpenStack components is accomplished using message queues through oslo.messaging as an indirection layer. While most OpenStack deployments use RabbitMQ, other message queues are supported.

Etcd

OpenStack components may use Etcd, a distributed reliable key-value store for distributed key locking, storing configuration, keeping track of service live-ness and other scenarios.

Keystone

Keystone handles AuthN/AuthZ for OpenStack components. Deployments can assume that Keystone will be present to perform that role.

Process for addition or removal

Leveraging features from a base service (rather than working around limitations or badly reinventing the wheel) is key to reaching acceptable levels of stability, performance and scaling. However, since they will likely have to be deployed in most OpenStack deployments, base services increase the operational complexity of running OpenStack. It is therefore very important to balance those two sides and conservatively consider proposed additions to the base services list, especially when those additions introduce a whole new class of operational challenges.

Once services start to make use of advanced features in a base service, it is difficult to remove it from the list and make it a specific dependency instead. Removals from the base service list should therefore be a rare and carefully considered event.

Proposed modifications to this document require a formal vote from the Technical Committee membership.