group-based-policy-specs/specs/mitaka/resource-status.rst
Sumit Naiksatam 48587b3dc5 Status attributes in the resource model
Proposes addition of attributes to reflect the opertaional
status of a resource.

Change-Id: Ice576b3ebf7f968e738b5c5dcdb32dd07b99b6f6
Implements: blueprint resource-status
2016-03-29 15:10:22 -07:00

6.4 KiB

Status for GBP Resources

Launchpad blueprint:

https://blueprints.launchpad.net/group-based-policy/+spec/resource-status

Problem description

GBP supports a configurable Policy Driver based design. Rendering of the GBP policy model can be performed by the Policy Driver in an asynchronous manner. However, currently there is no mechanism to reflect the state of a particular resource while it's being rendered and/or after its successful completion or failure. This requirement has also come up in the context of the service chain support1.

Proposed change

Reflecting the operational state of a resource is typically achieved in OpenStack projects by maintaining a status attribute23.

The status value will reflect one of the following states:

ACTIVE: The backend state of the resource is healthy and the user should expect the configured state of the resource to be in effect

ERROR: The backend state of the resource is in error and the user should not expect this resource to be operational

BUILD: The backend state of the resource is transient and may not be operational but not in error state

The state transition diagram for the above states is as follows:

+-----------+
+----------+           +--------+
|          |  BUILD    |        |
|     +---->           <--+     |
|     |    +-----------+  |     |
|     |                   |     |
|     |                   |     |
+--v-----+---+          +----+-----v-+
|            +---------->            |
|  ERROR     |          |  ACTIVE    |
|            <----------+            |
+------------+          +------------+

In addition to the status attribute it is proposed to also add a status_details attribute. This will be a free form string of a reasonable length that provides more granular and likely more backend-specific information about the status.

Both status and status_details attributes will be read-only attributes in the API and updated only by the internal implementation.

For backward compatibility, we will allow these two attributes to be set to None. When this attribute is not set, it implies that the backend implementation does not support the status attribute.

The changes in the backend state of a resource could be either provided by an asynchronouse update (by the backend), or could be pulled on demand. In the latter case, there needs to be a trigger to initiate the pull. The GET request on a resource can serve as this trigger. However, in the current framework, the GET request is satisfied by the plugin layer, and not relayed to the policy driver(s). This spec proposes an update to the policy driver API which will allow relaying the GET request the drivers.

It should be noted that if the status needs to be composed by multiple drivers, this would be the responsibility of the participating drivers. The framework changes proposed here would allow the status changes to be passed sequentially between the configured drivers (in the same way that a context is passed for the CREATE, UPDATE, and DELETE calls).

If the status, after invoking the last driver in the chain of drivers, is different from the persisted status, the persisted status is updated accordingly and made available to the caller.

Data model impact

The new attributes will be modeled in the DB as follows:

import sqlalchemy as sa

sa.Column('status', sa.Enum('active', 'build', 'error',
          name='resource_status'), nullable=True)

sa.Column('status_details', sa.String(length=4096), nullable=True)

REST API impact

The following update will be made to each resource's attribute map definition:

'status': {'allow_post': False, 'allow_put': False,
           'is_visible': True},
'status_details': {'allow_post': False, 'allow_put': False,
                   'is_visible': True},

Security impact

None

Notifications impact

None

Other end user impact

Performance impact

None anticipated.

Other deployer impact

Mitaka GBP client will be needed to read resource status.

Developer impact

Policy driver implementation should appropriately set the status for GBP resources.

The following API calls will be added to the Policy Driver API:

::

def get<resource>_status(self, <resource_context>):

As is the cases with CREATE, UPDATE, DELETE operations, the GBP Plugin will sequentially call the configured drivers with this API in response to a GET call. The initial <resource_context> is created with the state of the resource stored in the DB, and subsequently the <resource_context> processed by each policy driver is passed to the subsequently configured policy driver.

Community impact

Helps to achieve asynchronous behavior with GBP API.

Alternatives

None

Implementation

The initial patch will only update the GBP resource and DB model. The setting of resource status will be implemented in the planned asynchronous policy driver4.

Client will be updated to report status attributes. Updates to UI and Heat will be performed as follow up patches.

Assignee(s)

snaiksat

Work items

API and DB layer updates to GBP Resources. Service Chain resources will also be updated. Changes to the Service Chain driver will need to be handled separately.

Dependencies

None

Testing

Relevant UTs will be added.

Tempest Tests

None

Functional Tests

Functional tests will be added in follow up patches (as the policy drivers start populating the status).

API Tests

UTs

Documentation impact

User Documentation

Will provided with the new async policy driver.

Developer Documentation

Devref document will be added.

References


  1. https://bugs.launchpad.net/group-based-policy/+bug/1479706↩︎

  2. https://github.com/openstack/neutron/blob/master/neutron/common/constants.py#L18-L26↩︎

  3. http://docs.openstack.org/developer/nova/vmstates.html↩︎

  4. https://blueprints.launchpad.net/group-based-policy/+spec/async-policy-driver↩︎