ironic-specs/priorities/pike-priorities.rst

Pike Project Priorities

This is a list of development priorities the Ironic team is prioritizing for Pike development, in order of priority. The primary contact(s) listed is/are responsible for tracking the status of that work and herding cats to help get that work done. They are not the only contributor(s) to this work! The number of primary contacts is limited to 2 maximum to simplify communication. We expect at least one of them to have core privileges to simplify getting changes in.

Essential Priorities

Priority	Primary Contacts
Standalone CI tests	vsaienk0
Generic boot-from-volume	TheJulia, dtantsur
Rolling upgrades	rloo, jlvillal
Reference architecture guide	jroll, dtantsur
Python 3.5 compatibility	Nisha
Deploying with Apache and WSGI in CI	vsaienk0
Driver composition	jroll, dtantsur
Feature parity between two CLIs	rloo, dtantsur
OSC default API version change	dtantsur
Finish node tags	zhenguo, dtantsur

High Priorities

Priority	Primary Contacts
Rescue mode	stendulker, aparnav
Post-deploy VIF attach/detach	sambetts, vsaienk0
Physical network awareness	sambetts, vsaienk0
Routed networks support	sambetts, vsaienk0
Neutron event processing	vdrok, vsaienk0
IPA REST API versioning	sambetts

Optional Priorities

Priority	Primary Contacts
Split away the tempest plugin	soliosg, jlvillal
Deploy steps	yolanda, rloo
Redfish driver	lucasagomes, jroll
Supported power states API	dtantsur
Available clean steps API	rloo
E-Tags in API	galyna, vdrok

Details

Standalone CI tests

We are working on a set of tests that can be run without nova present. We expect this work to improve CI time, coverage and help test certain features (e.g. adoption) that are not quite compatible with nova.

Generic boot-from-volume

This work allows generic hardware to boot from remote storage, allowing diskless nodes to be managed by ironic. This also lays down the framework for hardware-specific implementations to be built.

Rolling upgrades

Many OpenStack projects are beginning to support rolling upgrades - we should too. Let's do our part to make downtimes a thing of the past. This involves code changes, new multi-node grenade CI jobs, and reviewer/developer documentation. The target now is Ocata -> Pike rolling upgrades.

Reference architecture guide

To help new deployers make the right choices, we need a document describing a reference architecture for an ironic deployment, especially around multi-tenant networking and co-existing with VMs.

Driver composition

We've done most of the coding. Let's concentrate on stabilizing the feature, writing new hardware types, polishing documentation and helping vendors with onboarding.

Feature parity between two CLIs

Let us make sure that all features implemented in the old ironic CLI are available in the new OSC-based openstack baremetal CLI.

OSC default API version change

Currently the default API version OSC sends to ironic is an old Kilo-era one. We need to figure out the path towards making the latest version the default.

Rescue mode

This is necessary for users that lose regular access to their machine (e.g. lost passwords). The spec was merged in Newton, the code is partially done, let's put some effort into making progress here in Pike.

Post-deploy VIF attach/detach

We already support attaching and detaching VIFs to nodes as part of the deployment process. Now we need to support the same for active nodes.

Physical network awareness

We need to make sure instances are not scheduled on nodes that cannot physically reach the networks they're connected to. This may require data model changes around ports. This is required for Routed networks support.

Routed networks support

Ironic should become aware of L2 segments available to connected networks as well as which L2 networks are actually available to nodes to correctly pick subnet (IP address) when doing provisioning/cleaning.

Neutron event processing

Currently ironic has no way to determine when certain asynchronous events actually finish in neutron, and with what result. Nova, on the contrary, uses a special neutron driver, which filters out notifications and posts some of them to a special nova API endpoint. We should do the same.

IPA REST API versioning

IPA API is currently not versioned, which causes problems when ironic starts relying on new features. Versioning similar to ironic API is expected to fix it and simplify upgrades.

Split away the tempest plugin

Currently we rely on certain hacks to make our CI use master version of the tempest plugin on all branches. The QA team suggests moving our tempest plugin to a separate branch instead, let's do it. We should also merge ironic and ironic-inspector plugins for simpler maintenance and consumption.

Deploy steps

This is an effort to split parts of our monolithic deployment process into steps, similar to cleaning. That will give driver authors a bit more freedom in customizing the deploy process, and simplify potential additions to it (like RAID, for example).

Supported power states API

The soft power/NMI spec proposes exposing available power states in the API. We didn't implement this part in Ocata, let us finish it now.

Available clean steps API

We need to expose available clean steps in the API, so that users know which actions they can run during manual cleaning. This is a part of the manual cleaning spec which was never implemented, despite the spec being marked as done.

E-Tags in API

We should add E-Tag support to our API to avoid race conditions during concurrent updates.