[Pacemaker] Announce: pcs / pcs-gui (Pacemaker/CorosyncConfiguration System)

[Matthew O'Connor]

No disrespect intended to the author of PCS, especially since I haven't yet looked at it yet.  In my limited experience with pacemaker/corosync, I must say crm is AWESOME and I wish more tools had comparable functionality!  Please tell Dejan Muhamedagic and all the contributors to keep up the good work! 



On 6/1/2012 10:56 AM, Florian Haas wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 1, 2012 at 1:40 AM, Chris Feist <cfeist at redhat.com> wrote:
>> I'd like to announce the existence of the "Pacemaker/Corosync configuration
>> system", PCS.
> Be warned, I will surely catch flak for what I'm about to say. Nothing
> of this should be understood in a personal way; my critique is about
> the work not the artist.
>
>> The emphasis in PCS differs somewhat from the existing shell:
> Before you get into where it differs in emphasis, can you explain why
> we need another shell?
>
>> PCS will continue the tradition of having a regression test suite and
>> discoverable 'ip'-like hierarchical "menu" structure, however unlike the
>> shell we may end up not adding interactivity.
> Strangely enough, if I were to name one feature as the most useful in
> the existing shell, it's its interactivity.
>
> How do you envision people configuring, say, an IPaddr2 resource when
> they don't remember the parameter names, or whether a specific
> parameter is optional or required? Or even the resource agent name?
>
>> Both projects are far from complete, but so far PCS can:
>> - Create corosync/pacemaker clusters from scratch
>> - Add simple resources and add constraints
> If I were a new user, I'd probably be unable to create even a simple
> resource with this, for the reason given above. But I will concede
> that at its current state it's probably unfair to expect that new
> users are able to use this. (The existing shell is actually usable for
> newcomers, even though it's not perfect. Why to we need a new shell
> again?)
>
>> - Create/Remove resource groups
> Why is it "resource create", but "resource group add"?
>
>> - Set most pacemaker configuration options
> How do you enumerate which ones are available?
>
>> - Start/Stop pacemaker/corosync
>> - Get basic cluster status
>> I'm currently working on getting PCS fully functional with Fedora 17 (and it
>> should work with other distributions based on corosync 2.0, pacemaker 1.1
>> and systemd).
>>
>> I'm hoping to have a fairly complete version of PCS for the Fedora 17
>> release (or very shortly thereafter) and a functioning version of pcs-gui
>> (which includes the ability to remotely start/stop nodes and set corosync
>> config) by the Fedora 18 release.
>>
>> The code for both projects is currently hosted on github
>> (https://github.com/feist/pcs & https://github.com/feist/pcs-gui)
>>
>> You can view a sample pcs session to get a preliminary view of how pcs will
>> work  - https://gist.github.com/2697640
> Any reason why the gist doesn't use "pcs cluster sync", which as per
> "pcs cluster --help" would sync the Corosync config across nodes?
>
>> Comments and contributions are welcome.
> I'm sorry, and I really don't mean this personally, but I just don't
> get the point. I fail to see significant advantages that would justify
> the duplication of effort versus the existing shell, not only in terms
> of development, but also documentation, training, educating users,
> etc. We've confused users aplenty in the past. Now we have a shell
> that while not perfect, works well, has a reasonable degree of
> interactivity and self-documentation, and is suitable for general use
> (at least in my, never very humble, opinion). I see no reason for it
> to be replaced.
>
> Assuming that this effort means you're planning to kick the existing
> crm shell out of Fedora, I think that's a really really bad idea.
>
> Just my two cents, of course, and if people speak up and say they hate
> the existing shell and this effort solves their problems, then I'm all
> for choice. But I can't recall hearing that from users.
>
> Cheers,
> Florian
>
> _______________________________________________
> Pacemaker mailing list: Pacemaker at oss.clusterlabs.org
> http://oss.clusterlabs.org/mailman/listinfo/pacemaker
>
> Project Home: http://www.clusterlabs.org
> Getting started: http://www.clusterlabs.org/doc/Cluster_from_Scratch.pdf
> Bugs: http://bugs.clusterlabs.org

-- 

Sincerely,
  Matthew O'Connor

-----------------------------------------------------------------
Sr. Software Engineer
PGP/GPG Key: 0x55F981C4
Fingerprint: E5DC A0F8 5A40 E4DA 2CE6 B5A2 014C 2CBF 55F9 81C4

Engineering and Computer Simulations, Inc.
11825 High Tech Ave Suite 250
Orlando, FL 32817

Tel:   407-823-9991 x315
Fax:   407-823-8299
Email: matt at ecsorl.com
Web:   www.ecsorl.com
-----------------------------------------------------------------

CONFIDENTIAL NOTICE: The information contained in this electronic
message is legally privileged, confidential and exempt from disclosure
under applicable law. It is intended only for the use of the individual
or entity named above. If the reader of this message is not the intended
recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution
or copying of this message is strictly prohibited. If you have received
this communication in error, please notify the sender immediately by
return e-mail and delete the original message and any copies of it from
your computer system. Thank you.