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{{header|cloud-sig}}
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Fedora Cloud Product Requirements Document.
<!-- The code for this page is kept at https://pagure.io/cloud-sig/blob/main/f/PRD.mw and should be edited and merged from there -->
= Purpose and Demographic =
The ''Cloud Edition Working Group'' targets efforts towards the
facilitation and improvement of continuous delivery by ensuring that Fedora project
solutions support cloud native workflow without forcing users to understand all of the
environments in which they require enablement.


= About this Document =
= Product Objectives =
This PRD (Product Requirements Document) is an evolving document, created by the Fedora Cloud SIG Working Group as part of the process for designing the Fedora Cloud product. The framework for the PRD itself is currently in a draft state.
The ''Fedora Cloud Edition'' allows users to work across multiple virtual environments at
scale by focusing engineering efforts on supplying a base disk images, rpms, and
container-based tooling of various architectures for working in and around public and
private cloud environments.  


The actual governance of this document, and whether or not it is “fixed” at a certain point in time or able to evolve (in the form of updating progress, etc.) is still to be determined.
== The Fedora Cloud Base Image ==
There are many requirements for building and deployment into the various options for
private and public clouds. The primary goal for the Cloud Edition is the Fedora Cloud Base
Image. The Cloud Base image provides disk images for all of the environments that can be tested
and confirmed to be functional. It is foundational to additional configurations and
initiatives that require an image-based deployment model.


== Authors ==
== Adaptations for Hyperscaler Use Cases ==
Contributors to this document include:
Some use cases may be considered as antithetical to the goals of other edition deployment
* [[User:rbergero|Robyn Bergeron]]
models, but have a strong use case to be included by default in hyperscalers. The use of
cloud-native components is continually evolving and highly opinionated, so there is added
benefit to including these curated images for use in the exploration of new technologies
and scientific reproducibility.


== Reviewers & Contributors ==
At the 2020 Power Management and Scheduling in the Linux Kernel summit (OSPM)[1], Andrea
The following people have contributed to the development of this document, through feedback on IRC, mailing lists, and other points of contact.  
Righi and Rafael Wysocki discussed the use of hibernation on cloud-based systems and
* * [[User:mattdm|Matthew Miller]]
reviewed work that they have done in support of the program. Jonathan Corbet points out
that "[t]he value there is to be able to pause a workload to save money. For example,
Amazon's ''spot instances'' run at low priority when there are spare resources available;
they can be shut down with ten minutes notice at any time."  With support from the Cloud
Edition team, the agents and kernel support can be maintained consistently and
reliably.


==  Community Information ==
There are a number of example use cases to explore in both traditional and non-traditional
The Fedora Cloud SIG is one of many teams within the Fedora Project.
ways and some of them are included in the next section. This use cases section is intended
to be updated as time goes on to identify specific initiatives and configurations that the
Cloud Edition can support.


The Cloud SIG mailing list is located [https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/cloud here.]
== Example Use Cases ==
=== An Example: Base image for use with Cloud IDE ===
The use of Fedora as a foundation for IDE environments such as the Amazon ''Cloud9'' IDE
requires curation and support. When it is not properly prepared, it cannot be included as
a part of the product offerings available to users who might wish to use them. A curated
package group is beneficial, but insufficient for Amazon service teams to trust that there
will be continued support. The Cloud Edition is consistent with other Fedora Editions, but
includes some active modifications to ensure support for next-generation technologies that
would not be possible with systems intended to be more consistent with downstream
directives.


Minutes and logs from IRC meetings related to the development of this document should be listed here as the document evolves.
=== An Example: Base Image optimized for use with cloud native Kubernetes services ===
== Approval History ==
Amongst the hyperscaler cloud infrastructures there are those services where a specialized
Over time, it is expected that this document will undergo various rounds of review, approval, and editing; in the future, it may be rewritten for different releases of Fedora.  
internal community is served. One for which the standard Fedora Editions does not include
specialized support. Optimizing images for use with downstream platforms, i.e. not OKD or
Red Hat OpenShift, for managing containerized workloads the cloud images can be for
example, Kubernetes (k8s): Support for k8s is,in all cloud providers, an opinionated
configuration that fits specifically an immutable operations model.


While one can review the history of a wiki document (by clicking the "history" tab), it is useful to provide explicit indicators of any major format changes, approvals, or indications of it being in a “final” state, in a list that can allow someone to quickly see that all of the prescribed layers of approval have occured.  
=== An Example: (EDA) Electronic Design Automation ===
EDA workloads typically target their support towards stable, downstream EL distributions
and are therefore not capable of moving as quickly as distributions like Fedora. With the
use of cloud-native technologies, it's clear that the design world is at last ready to
engage agile processes for the development of system-on-chip (SoC) design. The electronic
design automation (EDA) industry is maneuvering itself into position that makes new
technologies critical to decreasing time to market. Almost all of the pieces to facilitate
an SoC methodology are in place in terms of cloud-managed development tools. The industry
open access model is an ideal dovetail to ensure that the Fedora Cloud Edition can be a
target for early development and adoption of advanced technology.


* October 28, 2013: [http://fedoraproject.org/w/index.php?title=Cloud_PRD&oldid=358260 Initial Draft of template.]
For EDA, there is an expectation that a significant number of applications will run
* FutureDate: Approval by SomeGroup; link to any pertinent mail announcement and/or meeting minutes
generally in the same operating space. Additionally as function specialization occurs, it
will be beneficial to have an engineering specialization in tailoring these specialized
operating systems to the requirements of software-defined architecture.


==Tracking of Progress==
== Focus on the familiarity of the users. ==
This document contains numerous descriptions of use cases, descriptions of feature sets to address the use cases, and the requirements to enable those features. Numerous Fedora self-contained and systemwide changess (in addition to updates to individual packages) may combine to address those use cases and feature sets. Thus, as a single release, or even series of releases, undergoes development, it is useful to easily track how an entire use case or feature set may be progressing.  
There are many people who have not advanced to the level of using container-based models
for their bespoke code or operations practices. We don't want to leave them
behind. Furthermore, there are still established practices which can only support
containerization in part. Supporting these transitional and hybrid models is the focus of
the Cloud Working Group.are looking at ways we can build support for next-generation
support models.


While Fedora uses the [[Changes/Policy | Changes Process]] to track changes in the distribution, those changes are typically described as details of changes to a specific package, or the introduction of a specific package, rather than as a piece of a larger feature set.
Many users of applications software have decades of experience interacting with a base
operating system standard actions. They may not yet be able to move their practice to an
immutable OS model or use projects that abstract away from decades of \*nix software
development models.


This document could possibly be used to do any or a number of the following things:
== An established practice for investigating the best model for deployment and governance ==
In many cases, cloud providers may determine that their opinionated model is the best or
singularly valid model. This may be the result of focused groups or Product Managers who
do not have a familiarity with the possiblities of incorporating open source into their
active process due to concerns of any sort. It is a function of the cloud working group as
curators of the edition to actively explore these management models and software decisions
as a method to either determine the best of class open source interaction or to identify
in a way that is acceptable to the greater Fedora community exactly why the current model
is not handled in an [https://www.theopensourceway.org/ open source way].


* Provide a secondary location where changes are tracked (which seems like a lot of overhead to me)
Examples of opinionated models are the use of python 2.7 in Google's gcloud sdk or the practice
* Provide a location where overall Feature Progress is tracked, via periodic cross-checking against Change pages; this could be either in a standalone section, or simply attached to each Feature description.
of clobbering the systemd-acpid \`sleep.sh\` file in the Amazon Hibernation Agent. Simply
* Scope out  how features are expected to progress over a number of releases.
put, these are problems for the Cloud Edition to resolve and to help work with the
* None of these things.
upstream teams responsible to make their applications functional in the context of the
Fedora Distribution and downstream Enterprise Linux.


When we more fully determine how to most efficiently track progress, the pointer to where that tracking is done, and/or the description of or process by which we do the tracking is formalized, should be documented in this section in lieu of what is currently written here.
As a part of the working group, this team builds, monitors and improves the upstream
experiences complicated by closed or non-standard models to ensure that there is a path
forward to remove the barriers that block open source success for the cloud communities to
which we are aligned.


= Document Purpose and Overview =
= Architectural Considerations =
== What this document describes ==
== Boot Support ==
This is the Product Requirements Document for the Fedora Cloud SIG.
* Legacy Bios or ''Classic Boot''
* UEFI


(A formal definition of a Product Requirements Document can be seen on [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Product_requirements_document wikipedia.])
  The Boot support is dependent upon a number of other considedations. Neal Gompa's collaborative work with the Red Hat team has made our images ready for both without modification. Aarch64 is UEFI only.  


The contents of this document should seek to accomplish the following goals:
== Processor Architecture Support ==
* x86_64
* aarch64


* Provide a high-level market of the cloud computing market as it pertains to the Fedora Cloud SIG; this includes overviews of things which may not be within our actual scope/ability to accomplish at the current time.
= Participants =
* Provide deeper understanding of the types of users who could use Fedora for their cloud computing needs. This includes describing their main day-to-day tasks, common problems, etc. The perspective here is not necessarily limited to system administrators, or developers, but a combination of many types of users and roles.
Currently the following people are involved in the Cloud Working group.
* Ties common issues and needs of potential users/consumers of the Fedora Cloud product to high-level product needs, from a "functional" standpoint
* Provides solutions, in the form of "changes" or "features," which will provide the functionality described as needs for the potential users.


== Document Conventions==
* [https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Davdunc David Duncan]
=== Definitions and Acronyms ===
* AWS: Amazon Web Services
* Amazon EC2: Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud, a popular public IaaS
* IaaS: Infrastructure as a Service
* PaaS: Platform as a Service
* PRD: Product Requirements Document
* [[EPEL]]: Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux
* CI: Continuous Integration
* CD: Continuous Delivery or Continuous Deployment
* [[SoftwareCollections | SCL]]: Software Collections
* NTH: Nice-to-have
* BZ: [[Bugzilla]]


=== Indication of prioritization ===
* [https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Dustymabe Dusty Mabe]


=== Other ===
* [https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Mhayden Major Hayden]
* Items marked with a ? and following question in italicized lettering are open questions.
== Document Structure ==


Overview of what each section in the PRD (should) contains.
* [https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Ngompa Neal Gompa]


= Release/Product Overview =
* [https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Dcavalca Davida Cavalca]


Fedora Cloud provides a customizable base image and tools for developing scale out applications on public and private clouds, as well as a small number of images pre-configured for specific uses.
* [https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Salimma Michel Salim]


Public and private cloud adoption is taking off, and the requirements for an image OS differ significantly from the requirements for a desktop or server OS. In these environments, much or all of the instance lifecycle — from the creation of the image and addition of software or configuration specific to the instance, to the teardown of the image — will be automated.  Systems are designed to scale out via many identical nodes rather than scale up with carefully-tended individual servers. Individual uptime (mean time between failure) is not as important as the ability to get a new instance running quickly (mean time to recovery).
* [https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Chrismurphy Chris Murphy]


With that in mind, we're tailoring a release specifically for cloud environments.  
* [https://blog.centos.org/2022/03/new-centos-director-amy-marrich/ Amy Marrich]


== Market Opportunity ==
* [https://fedoramagazine.org/joe-doss-how-do-you-fedora/ Joe Doss]


Public and private cloud adoption is happening rapidly, but the market is not yet mature and is relatively ripe for disruption even though some favorites have emerged as early leaders.  
Many others have participated in the past and the projects a whole was
founded by the current (2022) [https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/council/fpl/ FPL], [https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Mattdm Matthew Miller]. Matthew has been integral in
working on the scope and practices followed by the Cloud Working Group for many years.


In the next two to three years, we expect to see a great deal of growth in adoption and still see a number of emerging players where no clear favorites have emerged (for instance, Google Compute Engine).


In short, there's an enormous opportunity for Fedora to become an instance-OS of choice if the project moves quickly, develops or adopts the right technologies, and succeeds in educating the market about its existence. A failure on any of those three points means that the Fedora Cloud product will have little chance in taking a significant portion of the new market or taking any of the existing market.
= Project Status =
The Working group is '''ACTIVE'''


== Product Objectives ==
Currently the Cloud Working Group is focused on returning to status as
an [https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/RestoreCloudEdition Edition].  Edition status lapsed as a result of a number of
changes. The first was a move to focus efforts related to cloud images
to include [https://projectatomic.io/ Project Atomic] as well as the standard cloud edition and
then a complication occurred when Fedora Atomic was replaced by Fedora
CoreOS. The directives for these working groups is distinctly
different and supports different goals related to downstream adoption
and support.


The Fedora Cloud product consists of an image to be used to run one or more instances in a public cloud, and a set of tools for creating and modifying images. We will also provide two to four additional images that are pre-configured for what we expect to be the most popular scenarios/use cases for using Fedora in public or private cloud.  
== Meeting Times ==
Bi-Weekly, every other Thursday. Currently we are supposed to be meeting at 15:00 UTC, but we have been meeting accidentally at 8:00 AM EDT daylight savings time. We are considering meeting on the 1st and 3rd of the month with a Video meeting on the 5th week of months that have a 5th week. Changing the meeting time would allow us to synchronize with the CentOS Cloud SIG for consistency.  


This consists of:
----
=== Footnotes ===


* AMIs of the Fedora Cloud release on Amazon
[1] https://lwn.net/Articles/821158/n
* qcow2 images for use with OpenStack
* raw.xz images for use with other IaaS clouds
 
A limited subset of tools that can be used to generate, modify, and configure Fedora instances for use with public and private clouds.
 
=== Major Release Themes ===
 
 
 
=== Secondary Objectives ===
 
Aside from adoption and development of applications on top of the Fedora Cloud images, we have a few secondary goals that should be helped by wider adoption:
 
* More testing of Fedora images with additional bug reports.
* Better feedback about how the product should improve. This is separate from "bug reports" in that we hope to engage the audience and receive detailed feedback about use cases, desired features, developing trends in cloud management, etc.
* Patches and contributions that will help improve the product, and Fedora in general. Assuming we're successful, some users should take an interest in helping to develop our product.
 
== Target Market / Audience ==
 
Developers creating scale out applications on top of public and private clouds.
 
== Delivery Mechanisms ==
 
How are users going to access the images published by Fedora Cloud? We need to ensure that images are as easy to consume as possible.
 
Since Fedora Cloud images are meant to be consumed as part of a public or private cloud, we won't be worrying about physical media at all.
 
Note that the cloud images also won't be "installed" in the same manner that users are accustomed to with desktop or server images. The cloud image will simply boot in its target environment ready to run and/or for further customization/configuration.
 
=== Where to obtain ===
 
Users will be able to obtain the images for public clouds via download *or* via the usual marketplace for those images. For instance, we publish Amazon AMIs on Amazon directly. Users are able to launch new instances with Fedora without having to obtain the images directly from the Fedora Project and then upload to Amazon.
 
Users will be able to download appropriate images for Apache CloudStack, Eucalyptus, OpenStack, and other IaaS platforms.
 
=== Delivery Format ===
 
Images will be delivered as AMIs on Amazon EC2, and as downloadable images in qcow2 and raw.xz formats.
 
== Measuring Success ==
 
Currently, Fedora is not a widely used option for instances on public and private clouds. We know there's some usage, but it's not one of the top three or four OSes on Amazon or (likely) for private clouds.
 
Success looks like:
 
- Increase in adoption. We should be able to measure this semi-accurately on Amazon (at least) as the publisher.
- Third party support / targeting of Fedora Cloud as a platform.
- Increased contribution and participation in the Fedora Cloud WG and Fedora Project in general.
 
= User Profiles, Goals, and Primary Use Cases =
Still working out some logic on this section. But forging ahead with what I have for the moment.
 
Goal of this section is to provide insight into either or both of:
 
* Primary Use Cases: What are the situations / environments in which we expect a Fedora Cloud Product to be used
* User Profiles and Goals: This is more like “personas” work, or could be done as “user stories” (more along the lines of agile, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_story )
 
... and then ensure that for each type of user or use case, we have features/changes that make the Fedora Cloud product useful.
== User Profiles ==
 
Based on [https://docs.google.com/document/d/16rkiXWxxgzGT47_Wc6hzIPzO2-s2JWAPEKD0gP2mt7E OpenStack personas] (licensed under CC-By 3.0).
 
Three Cloud User Roles (based on “Description and Application of Core Cloud User Roles” ACM CHIMIT 2011, December 4 2011) that describe the tasks of the people who interact with any cloud-based Information Technology system:
 
# Cloud Service Creator: Develop the technical and business aspects of a (simple or high-level) cloud service
# Cloud Service Provider: Provide all types of services (SPI, etc.) to a Service Consumer
# Cloud Service Consumer: Consume all types of services (SPI) offered by a Service Provider
 
 
=== Persona #1: Alan the AWS enthusiast ===
 
Alan was an early AWS adopter. He writes and maintains a number of AWS-deployed applications, including staging and production, from the same data source. He needs to monitor his applications for cost, resource consumption, demand peaks and any crashes. He works for a small start-up. Puppet master.
 
* Adoption curve: Early adopter
* Skills: Experienced web developer & operations guy - not on his first cloud application architecture, masters CI and CD.
* Behavior patterns: Wants to concentrate on application development, not architecture. Change management - applying security updates to guest systems - takes a chunk of his time. He spends a little time every few months evaluating the cloud architecture to consider alternative components to increase price/performance.
* Goals: To deliver excellent scalable web-deployed applications with a web interface and robust API for a mobile application front-end. To deliver incremental, tested updates to the applications on a regular basis.
* Needs: Application lifecycle management, monitoring, to make his apps faster.
* Main Tasks:
* Attitudes: Alan loves the cloud. He might consider an alternative public cloud, but the cost would have to be cheap enough to justify the risk & effort of migrating away.
* Beliefs: Continuous deployment is king. Automate all the things. Do the hardest things often, until they’re easy. etc.
* Environment: Macbook for development, deploys to AWS for test, staging and production.
* Interface Usage Tendencies:
** UI: Medium-High
** CLI: High
** API: Medium
* Collaborates With:
 
 
 
=== Persona #2: Brad the beginner ===
 
 
Brad is new to cloud computing and just wants to try out a few things to see what it is about.
 
* Adoption curve: Early adopter - will try anything once
* Skills: Limited familiarity with Linux systems, certainly not an administrator. Graduate with 1 year experience in programming in .NET framework.
* Behavior patterns: Works for Acme Software as a .NET programmer, testing OpenStack out of curiosity. May possibly install and uninstall OpenStack a few times over a period of a week or two.
* Goals: Wants a simple quick installation of OpenStack to get a feel for what it is.
* Needs: A simple quick installation experience with clear concise step-by-step instructions or a downloadable pre-configurable image to jumpstart using OpenStack. Minimal configuration or option choices required.
* Main Tasks:
* Attitudes: As this is his first experiment with OpenStack, long term viability, reliability and efficiency of an installation are not priorities. Getting OS up and running on one machine and removing it after brief evaluation is all that is envisaged.
* Beliefs: OpenStack is the next new-new thing but it is still a changing environment. I should probably know more about this “cloud” stuff.
* Workflow: This OpenStack installation is not an official part of Brad's job description, he might devote a few hours a day over a week or two to installing and playing with OS on a single separate computer between his day-to-day programming activities on other machines.
* Environment: One middle of the range Linux-based desktop/laptop computer., e.g. 2.5 GHz CPU, 4 GB memory. Few or no other networked computing resources for his initial foray into OpenStack. Internet connection for RHOS download.
* Interface Usage Tendencies:
** UI: Medium-High
** CLI: Low-Medium
** API: None
* Collaborates With:
 
=== Persona #3: Erin the web developer/devops person ===
 
Erin uses the cloud to do software development utilizing virtual machines.
 
* Adoption curve: Early adopter
* Skills: Familiar with Linux systems. Several years' programming experience in Linux and other environments.
* Behavior patterns: Will choose from the range of available flavors of VMs to run. Will use OpenStack images to launch instances, also create and save her own.
* Goals: To set up and use OpenStack services with a minimum of fuss. Erin is focussed on the applications that will run on OpenStack and regards the services as resources to    be used with a minimum of administrative overhead.
* Needs: A user friendly GUI interface, and a logically set-out and explained command line instruction set. Integration with her preferred CI tool.
* Main Tasks:
* Attitudes: Erin considers any complex administrative tasks to be the OpenStack administrator's job, and expects them to be responsive to requirements.
* Beliefs: OpenStack is a tool for running applications that will be more scalable and flexible than dedicated hardware.
* Workflow: Will mostly use the GUI and command line to set up and interact with OpenStack services, and will ensure that rolling out the application will be automated as much as possible. She will use the dashboard to monitor consumption of resources on an ongoing basis.
* Environment: A machine with enough memory and storage to run the applications needed to utilize the remote OpenStack service. High speed internet connection between Erin's workstation and OpenStack servers.
* Interface Usage Tendencies:
** UI: Medium-High
** CLI: Medium
** API: Low
* Collaborates With:
 
 
=== Persona #4: Walter the Web Developer ===
 
Walter develops feature rich HTML5 applications using Symfony and Bootstrap, and a range of other web technologies. He has no real system administration skills, and develops on a single desktop computer or his MacBook. Walter wants the app to Just Work when he’s finished, and doesn’t really think a lot about caching, sharding, proxies, or making his app scalable. He works in a medium sized development shop which has people who take care of deployment and change management to the web applications he produces.
 
By-line: “Not a bug: Works for me”
 
* Adoption curve: Early adopter for web technologies, laggard for systems
* Skills: PHP, Ruby, Python, Javascript, CSS, multiple MVC frameworks, experienced Linux & MacOS X user (but not admin), comfortable setting up LAMP, github.
* Behavior patterns: Wants to concentrate on application development, not architecture. Spends most of his time in TextMate, and testing how app behaves and looks in VirtualBox.
* Goals: To deliver excellent web applications and robust RESTful API for mobile apps.
* Needs: Up to date application development stack, good developer tools, someone to actually deploy his app.
* Main Tasks:
* Attitudes: Walter would like to know more about the cloud but there’s so much to learn, he has no real idea where to start, and just keeping on top of new web development trends takes all his research time.
* Beliefs: “This stuff should be easier to get a handle on”
* Environment: Macbook for development, a Linux desktop for test deployment, VirtualBox for testing on different browsers.
* Interface Usage Tendencies:
** UI: High
** CLI: Low
** API: Low
* Collaborates With:
 
== Primary Use Cases ==
=== Fedora Cloud Image on Amazon Web Services (AWS) ===
 
==== Goal ====
 
* Make Fedora Cloud Image suitable for developers using Amazon EC2 to build and deploy applications on top of.
 
==== Assumptions ====
 
* Developer is looking for a cloud instance that will have a limited life cycle, and is not concerned about the individual instance (cattle) being fault-tolerant, etc.
* The developer wants to have very recent libraries/applications available.
* Instance will be managed using EC2 tools and configuration management tools like Puppet, Chef, Ansible, etc. and will not be SSH'ing into individual instances to manage them one at a time.
 
==== Workflow ====
 
=== Primary Use Case #2 ===
 
= Secondary Use Cases =
Because cloud is “cloudy,” sometimes the cloud product requirements may be dependent on enablement in other Fedora products. Additionally, there may be open source projects with which we desire compatibility.
 
Note that some of these secondary use cases may overlap with primary use cases. (Or this section may be entirely rolled into that section; TBD.)
 
== IaaS environments ==
Ensure that the Fedora Server product can serve as a platform for the following IaaS projects, or at least  that the Fedora Cloud product can be used as a guest/VM/image with those services. For projects that are not currently packaged within Fedora/EPEL, we may need to locate a kind person to ensure testing.
=== OpenStack ===
=== Eucalyptus ===
=== Apache Cloudstack ===
Ensure that fedora cloud image can be used as shipped with Apache cloudstack.Because there is no predefined use of the images on the platform, it should generally be as flexible to run on the platform and provide services as configured. Some of the use cases include:
 
Mail Servers
Web Server and Web application servers
Data management servers
 
It is assumed to support snapshots and templates as is made possible on other platforms.
 
This is managed by Frankie Onuonga.
 
=== OpenNebula ===
== PaaS environments ==
=== OpenShift ===
== Big Data ==
== Development environments ==
Fedora should be a useful, productive environment for developers writing code to be executed in a cloud environment.
=== Simple Deployment of code to from dev to production ===
As a developer, I want to ensure that my code is easily deployable from my development environment to a production environment, without encountering issues of non-compatibility.
Example: A feature described as “Improved deployment of code to a cloud” might be fully described in the Features section, and as a result, Vagrant might be listed as a requirement in the non-functional requirements section, and cross-coordinated with the workstation working group. There are likely numerous other requirements as well.
=== Development as part of a team ===
As a member of a development team, I would like to develop in an environment where code can go through unit or functional testing, and be approved or accepted by other members of the team.
Example: A feature described as “Continuous Integration platform” may be listed in the Features section, and the various tools available to implement  would be enumerated and described in the “non-functional requirements” section, and cross-coordinated with the server working group.
=== Development using libraries not included in the distribution ===
As a developer, my toolchain includes libraries or dependencies on other packages using libraries not in the Fedora distribution, and I may be developing for distributions not limited to Fedora.
 
Example: A feature described as “Portable code” (REALLY POOR DESCRIPTION, sorry) may be listed in the Features section, and “Software Collections” might be listed as a requirement.
 
Note that this may have some cross-over with a possible additional story/use case, “Deployment of code using libraries not included in the distribution.”
 
= Features =
Features here address the primary and secondary use cases, product or secondary objectives,  market opportunities from above.
 
Features should provide functional requirements (“what it should do”) preferably in a narrative fashion - more of a story / solution description, rather than “package XYZ” - the features (the ways to meet a user's objectives?) each likely consist of more than one package/enhancement, and those packages should be detailed in the “Detailed requirements” section of this document, and each of those detailed requirements should refer back to which feature it supports.
 
== Feature #1 ==
Feature description should be described in the line saying “Feature #1/2/etc.”.
Describe the feature in more detail, specifically addressing how it addresses user scenarios, primary or secondary use cases / objectives of the product.
 
Use a table to indicate the following items:
Priority (Must, Should, NTH)
Citation of use cases addressed
 
As work continues and specific detailed requirements are developed, reference the detailed requirements within this document helping to fulfill this feature. This helps to ensure awareness around “do we still have a feature if some of the detailed requirements are not fulfilled, and thus are not able to address the specific use case needs / user objectives.”
 
== Feature #2 ==
 
= Detailed Requirements =
Supporting packages / work required for the product itself to function to address the use cases above. Non-functional requirements (i.e.: requirements outside the scope of how it actually works / solves problems) are addressed in a later section.
 
Note that this section does not have to be filled out in detail to the extent that a “Change” would require (per the Changes process in Fedora.)
 
== Bucket List ==
* Per jwb's [https://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/cloud/2013-October/002862.html mail] on 2013-10-30 - questions around kernel requirements need to be addressed at some point, wrt requests for a more minimal kernel for cloud images.
 
== Requirement #1 (Short Description of Requirement) ==
=== Feature(s) Addressed ===
Refer to which previously described Features, Use Cases this requirement helps to fulfill.
=== Priority ===
Must, should, NTH
=== Effort required ===
High, Medium, Low
=== Stakeholders / Owners ===
=== Major Dependencies ===
Any major dependencies, including things that may require any cross-working-group coordination, should be called out here. Any process changes required within Fedora should be documented here as well.
=== Testing ===
Level of testing required; is it a blocker to release?
Is the testing automate-able?
=== Other Documentation ===
* Existing BZ:
* Upstream webpage / wiki page / github page(s):
 
== Requirement #2 (Short Description of Requirement) ==
 
= Non-functional requirements =
These are the requirements needed that are not necessarily part of implementation of the product itself, but are still required as part of either making the product more attractive/useful, compatibility requirements for a user's workflow (ie: “works with Puppet,”) or things needing to be done/coordinated in other areas of the project (in other working groups?) to ensure a well-rounded solution.
 
For each, as was done with Features in a previous section, we should call out some additional information, assuming doing so makes sense for the requirement:
* Priority (Must, Should, NTH)
* Effort required
* Major dependencies / Process Changes needed
* Stakeholders/Owners
* Existing Documentation: BZ #, pointers to upstream project docs
 
== Image Creation ==
How to create images. Do not be shocked if there are 48 ways to do this. Also: not sure if we want to include containers in this section.
=== Creation of “official” Fedora Project images ===
New images. Updated images (ie: providing newer images for a release that have updates already included) might also be included here?
=== Images created by users ===
 
== Installation/deployment requirements ==
== Configuration Management ==
== Migration / Upgrades ==
== Documentation ==
=== Fedora Project Documentation ===
=== Open Source Projects documentation ===
Ensuring that Fedora is well-represented, up-to-date in other open source project documentation...
== Performance / Scalability / Failover ==
== Maintainability ==
== Support Requirements ==
=== Architectures Supported ===
=== Supported (platforms?) ===
Virtualization types? Container types?
== Internationalization / Localization ==
== Logging / Auditing ==
== Monitoring / Notification ==
== Database requirements ==
== Security ==
 
= Release Criteria =

Latest revision as of 20:45, 1 November 2022

The Fedora Cloud Special Interest Group

Purpose and Demographic

The Cloud Edition Working Group targets efforts towards the facilitation and improvement of continuous delivery by ensuring that Fedora project solutions support cloud native workflow without forcing users to understand all of the environments in which they require enablement.

Product Objectives

The Fedora Cloud Edition allows users to work across multiple virtual environments at scale by focusing engineering efforts on supplying a base disk images, rpms, and container-based tooling of various architectures for working in and around public and private cloud environments.

The Fedora Cloud Base Image

There are many requirements for building and deployment into the various options for private and public clouds. The primary goal for the Cloud Edition is the Fedora Cloud Base Image. The Cloud Base image provides disk images for all of the environments that can be tested and confirmed to be functional. It is foundational to additional configurations and initiatives that require an image-based deployment model.

Adaptations for Hyperscaler Use Cases

Some use cases may be considered as antithetical to the goals of other edition deployment models, but have a strong use case to be included by default in hyperscalers. The use of cloud-native components is continually evolving and highly opinionated, so there is added benefit to including these curated images for use in the exploration of new technologies and scientific reproducibility.

At the 2020 Power Management and Scheduling in the Linux Kernel summit (OSPM)[1], Andrea Righi and Rafael Wysocki discussed the use of hibernation on cloud-based systems and reviewed work that they have done in support of the program. Jonathan Corbet points out that "[t]he value there is to be able to pause a workload to save money. For example, Amazon's spot instances run at low priority when there are spare resources available; they can be shut down with ten minutes notice at any time." With support from the Cloud Edition team, the agents and kernel support can be maintained consistently and reliably.

There are a number of example use cases to explore in both traditional and non-traditional ways and some of them are included in the next section. This use cases section is intended to be updated as time goes on to identify specific initiatives and configurations that the Cloud Edition can support.

Example Use Cases

An Example: Base image for use with Cloud IDE

The use of Fedora as a foundation for IDE environments such as the Amazon Cloud9 IDE requires curation and support. When it is not properly prepared, it cannot be included as a part of the product offerings available to users who might wish to use them. A curated package group is beneficial, but insufficient for Amazon service teams to trust that there will be continued support. The Cloud Edition is consistent with other Fedora Editions, but includes some active modifications to ensure support for next-generation technologies that would not be possible with systems intended to be more consistent with downstream directives.

An Example: Base Image optimized for use with cloud native Kubernetes services

Amongst the hyperscaler cloud infrastructures there are those services where a specialized internal community is served. One for which the standard Fedora Editions does not include specialized support. Optimizing images for use with downstream platforms, i.e. not OKD or Red Hat OpenShift, for managing containerized workloads the cloud images can be for example, Kubernetes (k8s): Support for k8s is,in all cloud providers, an opinionated configuration that fits specifically an immutable operations model.

An Example: (EDA) Electronic Design Automation

EDA workloads typically target their support towards stable, downstream EL distributions and are therefore not capable of moving as quickly as distributions like Fedora. With the use of cloud-native technologies, it's clear that the design world is at last ready to engage agile processes for the development of system-on-chip (SoC) design. The electronic design automation (EDA) industry is maneuvering itself into position that makes new technologies critical to decreasing time to market. Almost all of the pieces to facilitate an SoC methodology are in place in terms of cloud-managed development tools. The industry open access model is an ideal dovetail to ensure that the Fedora Cloud Edition can be a target for early development and adoption of advanced technology.

For EDA, there is an expectation that a significant number of applications will run generally in the same operating space. Additionally as function specialization occurs, it will be beneficial to have an engineering specialization in tailoring these specialized operating systems to the requirements of software-defined architecture.

Focus on the familiarity of the users.

There are many people who have not advanced to the level of using container-based models for their bespoke code or operations practices. We don't want to leave them behind. Furthermore, there are still established practices which can only support containerization in part. Supporting these transitional and hybrid models is the focus of the Cloud Working Group.are looking at ways we can build support for next-generation support models.

Many users of applications software have decades of experience interacting with a base operating system standard actions. They may not yet be able to move their practice to an immutable OS model or use projects that abstract away from decades of \*nix software development models.

An established practice for investigating the best model for deployment and governance

In many cases, cloud providers may determine that their opinionated model is the best or singularly valid model. This may be the result of focused groups or Product Managers who do not have a familiarity with the possiblities of incorporating open source into their active process due to concerns of any sort. It is a function of the cloud working group as curators of the edition to actively explore these management models and software decisions as a method to either determine the best of class open source interaction or to identify in a way that is acceptable to the greater Fedora community exactly why the current model is not handled in an open source way.

Examples of opinionated models are the use of python 2.7 in Google's gcloud sdk or the practice of clobbering the systemd-acpid `sleep.sh` file in the Amazon Hibernation Agent. Simply put, these are problems for the Cloud Edition to resolve and to help work with the upstream teams responsible to make their applications functional in the context of the Fedora Distribution and downstream Enterprise Linux.

As a part of the working group, this team builds, monitors and improves the upstream experiences complicated by closed or non-standard models to ensure that there is a path forward to remove the barriers that block open source success for the cloud communities to which we are aligned.

Architectural Considerations

Boot Support

  • Legacy Bios or Classic Boot
  • UEFI
 The Boot support is dependent upon a number of other considedations. Neal Gompa's collaborative work with the Red Hat team has made our images ready for both without modification. Aarch64 is UEFI only.

Processor Architecture Support

  • x86_64
  • aarch64

Participants

Currently the following people are involved in the Cloud Working group.

Many others have participated in the past and the projects a whole was founded by the current (2022) FPL, Matthew Miller. Matthew has been integral in working on the scope and practices followed by the Cloud Working Group for many years.


Project Status

The Working group is ACTIVE

Currently the Cloud Working Group is focused on returning to status as an Edition. Edition status lapsed as a result of a number of changes. The first was a move to focus efforts related to cloud images to include Project Atomic as well as the standard cloud edition and then a complication occurred when Fedora Atomic was replaced by Fedora CoreOS. The directives for these working groups is distinctly different and supports different goals related to downstream adoption and support.

Meeting Times

Bi-Weekly, every other Thursday. Currently we are supposed to be meeting at 15:00 UTC, but we have been meeting accidentally at 8:00 AM EDT daylight savings time. We are considering meeting on the 1st and 3rd of the month with a Video meeting on the 5th week of months that have a 5th week. Changing the meeting time would allow us to synchronize with the CentOS Cloud SIG for consistency.

Footnotes

[1] https://lwn.net/Articles/821158/n

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