I have one follow-up question that popped up into my head. The differences you outlined
are clear to me from a the perspective of a user or organization who is setting up a PaaS
or IaaS for consumption by some group of users. From a user perspective, who is looking
at functionality and what a UI provides, the distinction feels less clear to me. Going
from OpenShift to Winged Monkey feels in some respects like simply being granted more
control. In other words, as a basic user the OpenShift interface provides a very
stream-lined and simplified approach with regards to here is a pre-configured environment
that let's me do straight-forward applications really easy. Now, as I move from being
a basic user to one that needs more control, or needs a more complex environment I flip
the switch over to a Winged Monkey interface where I now have more options presented to
me, more control and the tools to handle my more complex setups. However, I can also see
it from the reverse standpoint after re-reading Greg's response, where you would use
Winged Monkey to test and configure an environment, an application stack to a stable point
that you could then bundle and present to users via a PaaS.
Which finally gets me to my question - is there a project goal to achieve both or one
direction in particular?
-Eric
----- Original Message -----
From: "Hugh Brock" <hbrock(a)redhat.com>
To: "Greg Blomquist" <gblomqui(a)redhat.com>
Cc: "Eric Helms" <ehelms(a)redhat.com>, aeolus-devel(a)lists.fedorahosted.org
Sent: Monday, October 29, 2012 5:49:35 PM
Subject: Re: Winged Monkey
On Mon, Oct 29, 2012 at 05:37:48PM -0400, Greg Blomquist wrote:
Thanks for following along, Eric!
----- Original Message -----
> From: "Eric Helms" <ehelms(a)redhat.com>
> To: aeolus-devel(a)lists.fedorahosted.org
> Sent: Monday, October 29, 2012 3:28:46 PM
> Subject: Re: Winged Monkey
>
>
> The question: As a user of Openshift, aspects of the design and the
> feel
> of the UI feel 1-for-1 and in some respects are attempting to meet
> the
> same needs. On which points are there clear divisions between the
> two
> projects? Would I be choosing based on maturity and feature sets down
> the road or is there a clear 'Openshift fills these needs' while
> 'Winged
> Monkey fills these other needs'?
>
This drives to the heart of the distinction between IaaS and PaaS.
In the long term (and maybe for certain user classes), this distinction
may become completely blurred.
However, for the near term (3 years? 5 years? longer?) the distinction is
still visible. With PaaS, a consumer is getting a pre-packaged platform
environment where they can run their specific application (rails, django,
whatever). The tradeoff is the amount of control the consumer will have
with the environment they are allotted.
With IaaS, the consumer requests a set of resources based on some
specification, and will generally have larger control over those resources
than allowed under PaaS.
So, whereas OpenShift will supply a user with an environment to run a
Django app, Winged Monkey will supply a user with a resource for testing
out installing and configuring Django from scratch.
Hope that helps. Lemme know if that doesn't really clear it up.
Yeah I just want to reinforce what Greg said here.
I think (based on my own recent personal experience with this) that it
will be a long time before most people are willing to hand over the keys
to their production apps to the extent you have to do with a PaaS
solution. I'm talking about tight control over software versions,
network configuration, instance sizing, and so on -- all stuff you take
for granted with IaaS, but that PaaS deliberately obscures from you.
This doesn't mean PaaS isn't useful, far far from it. But I think there
are always going to be people who want root on all their VMs, and those
people are going to want a solid management tool that makes managing
them easy across platforms. This is what we're banking on with Winged
Monkey.
Take care,
--Hugh
--
== Hugh Brock, hbrock(a)redhat.com ==
== Engineering Manager, Cloud BU ==
== Aeolus Project: Manage virtual infrastructure across clouds. ==
==
http://aeolusproject.org ==
"I know that you believe you understand what you think I said, but I’m
not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant."
--Robert McCloskey