Winged Monkey

Greg Blomquist gblomqui at redhat.com
Fri Oct 26 15:37:10 UTC 2012



----- Original Message -----
> From: "Andy Goldstein" <andy.goldstein at redhat.com>
> To: "Greg Blomquist" <gblomqui at redhat.com>
> Cc: aeolus-devel at lists.fedorahosted.org
> Sent: Friday, October 26, 2012 11:10:36 AM
> Subject: Re: Winged Monkey
> 
> 
> On Oct 26, 2012, at 10:47 AM, Greg Blomquist wrote:
> 
> > Hey Jarda
> > 
> > ----- Original Message -----
> >> From: "Jaromír Coufal" <jcoufal at redhat.com>
> >> To: "Greg Blomquist" <gblomqui at redhat.com>
> >> Cc: aeolus-devel at lists.fedorahosted.org
> >> Sent: Friday, October 26, 2012 7:59:56 AM
> >> Subject: Re: Winged Monkey
> >> 
> >> Hi Greg,
> >> 
> >> thank you for your answer, there are few reactions within the
> >> text.
> >> 
> > 
> > <big snip>
> > 
> >> 
> >>> Don't take this as a directive to drop everything related to
> >>> Conductor and start devoting time to Winged Monkey.  You should
> >>> only
> >>> get involved if it actually makes sense for you to do so.
> >> Oh, no worries, I don't take it directive. I just wanted to bring
> >> out
> >> my
> >> thoughts, which might help to see it from different point of view.
> >> I
> >> don't say I am right, I don't say that these are my thoughts I
> >> will
> >> insist on. Please, take it more like discussion about Winked
> >> Monkey
> >> and
> >> Conductor, which helps to make the project more clear (at least to
> >> me).
> >> 
> >> -- Jarda
> >> 
> > 
> > I believe this is the core of our discussion.  We're circling
> > around
> > the opposite ends of the same idea:  serve more than just the admin
> > user community of cloud users.
> > 
> > Clearly, there are ideas that I've snipped out above that I should
> > probably respond to.  But, in the end, I think you and I could
> > dance
> > around the technical merit of different approaches to realizing
> > this
> > idea of providing a useful interface for non-technical cloud users.
> 
> Could you please elaborate on what sort of person is a "non-technical
> cloud user?"  What sort of VMs do you envision them spinning up?  Is
> the thinking that someone else (a "technical" user or an admin) will
> precreate images that provide services for which the end-user does
> not need to use SSH or have Linux skills?  If so, I'm guessing this
> would be something like an image that, when started, automatically
> launches something like Wordpress (or whatever app/site has a good
> OOTB experience and doesn't require SSH).  If not, then I'm not sure
> there really is a non-technical cloud user.

The simplest explanation is someone who doesn't really care about the
details of virtualization.  I.e., someone who doesn't care about the
creation of images or the differences in hypervisors.  Perhaps 
"non-technical" is too broad a term and tries to capture too many 
classes of users.  Maybe "cloud indifferent" is a better term.

This probably feeds directly into Jiri's discussion on personas and
the importance of spending time getting them right.

I think you're probably right that there's a technical component to
all users.  A user that just wants a video processing farm is very
technical when it comes to video processing.  But, maybe doesn't 
care a bit about the differences between full virtualization and
para-virtualization.  They only care that they have a fast and 
powerful environment that can do their video processing quickly.

A user that spins up any type of web application environment (such
as wordpress), may be very technical when it comes to understanding
the nuances of apache configuration and reading the details of X509
certs to determine routing rules in apache.  But, they may not 
necessarily care whether their web application is running in a
virtualized environment or on bare metal.  Some might ;)

There's an overlap, certainly.  No big permanent marker is gonna 
clearly delineate the user classes for us.  But, we can attempt to
focus in on a single group.

For Winged Monkey, that group is the class of user who:
  * doesn't really care that much about virtualization
  * has possibly very technical things they want to do other than
    managing connections to cloud providers or building images

Hopefully that helps elucidate.

> 
> 
> > 
> > My sincere belief is that we're both right.  In fact, I think
> > Conductor _should_ be enhanced and expanded to support
> > non-technical
> > users.  I believe that should happen because we have an obligation
> > to try out that path forward.
> > 
> > I also believe that we should simultaneously explore other paths
> > forward.  Winged Monkey is one such path.
> > 
> > You've raised valid technical concerns that I've snipped.  The
> > main reason is that I don't have all the technical answers.  My
> > default answer to anything regarding "hey, you need to handle XYZ"
> > is, at least for the foreseeable future, going to be "no I don't,
> > some other app already does that".
> > 
> > That's insufficient as a technical argument, I completely
> > understand
> > that.  And, it's difficult to paint a better picture until those
> > technical arguments can be defended.  Until that time comes, I'm
> > gonna keep trudging forward with this to either show it can work,
> > or disprove its value.  I don't think I've reached either of those
> > ends yet, though.
> > 
> > Hope that helps a bit.
> > 
> > ----
> > Greg
> 
> 



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