I sent the following on Dec 15 2015 to the dev list
To my knowledge no one took any interest at the time but perhaps we
could work on this or point out where I am too picky.
Ron
------------------------------------
http://docs.cloudstack.apache.org/en/latest/concepts.html#deployment-architecture-overview
Network section is really unclear.
In about Physical Networking there are 4 Traffic types defined
Guest, Management, Public and Storage.
Later on the term "Direct IP range" is used but never defined. "These
IPs are in the same VLAN as the hosts." is added without any explanation
of what this means or how this relates to various traffic types or any
statement about what VLAN the hosts are in or where their addresses come
from.
In Advanced Networking it says "The hosts in a pod are assigned private
IP addresses. These are typically RFC1918 addresses."
Is this different than in Basic Networking? Why is it important in
Advanced Networking but not required in Basic. Is it not true for both?
In the next paragraph it says:
"For zones with advanced networking, we recommend provisioning enough
private IPs for your total number of customers, plus enough for the
required CloudStack System VMs.
Typically, about 10 additional IPs are required for the System VMs."
How is this different in Basic Network?
What has the importance of "customers"? They are never defined or
mentioned earlier and has no relationship to physical hosts as near as I
can tell from my understanding of "customers" and "hosts".
I am not sure how one decides if you are "typical" or what would make
your situation require more or less.
Perhaps it should be a bit more definite "Allow at least 10 IPS for the
SYSTEM VMs unless you xxx xxx xxx in which case you will need on for
each yyy"
System VMs are very poorly defined earlier in the Traffic type section.
"system VMs (VMs used by CloudStack to perform various tasks in the
cloud), and any other component that communicates directly with the
CloudStack Management Server. You must configure the IP range for the
system VMs to use."
"Various tasks " could hardly be more vague. Surely someone must have a
list or a count with a link to the reference section.
The last sentence about assigning IP addresses System VMs is confusing
in a paragraph about Traffic Types and should be omitted since it will
be discussed later when IP addresses are discussed.
It seems to me that there should be a reorganization of this section
with a clear statement of all the things that are true for both Basic
and Advanced with careful attention paid to vocabulary and proper
definition of new buzzwords as they are added.
Then differentiate the handling of Basic vs Advanced in 2 sections that
are clearly written in a parallel structure and sequence so it is easy
to see what the difference is.
This is an important section and should be an overview.
There are too many references to exceptions related to specific hardware
or hypervisors.
If these have to be in the overview, they should be as footnotes or
special sections at the end of the overview.
Some simple diagrams should be included to make the network topology and
IP address assignments clearer.
Networking is an important part of Cloudstack and is the source of a lot
more confusion that the hierarchy of hosts to region which include 4
diagrams.
I hope that this helps.
Ron
--
Ron Wheeler
President
Artifact Software Inc
email: rwhee...@artifact-software.com
skype: ronaldmwheeler
phone: 866-970-2435, ext 102
On 03/03/2016 11:33 PM, Sanjeev Neelarapu wrote:
Hi Ron,
It would be helpful for all the users in the community if you can specify what
changes needs to be done for the cloudstack documents to get way with the
confusions about the networking.
If you specify what problems you have faced while setting up the cloudstack
that would also be helpful.
Thanks,
Sanjeev
-----Original Message-----
From: Ron Wheeler [mailto:rwhee...@artifact-software.com]
Sent: Friday, March 04, 2016 12:32 AM
To: users@cloudstack.apache.org
Subject: Re: Really really confused about Cloudstack networking
I have been using Linux and the Internet since the mid 1990s.
There are still 3 consecutively numbered C class registered to me for different
clients back in the days when c-class networks were given out from massive
ranges of free numbers.
I have set up small ISP operations for clients with multiple domains including
web sites, e-mail servers, fileservers, etc.
I have done this on SCO , Mandrake, CentOS 4 to 7.
I should not have to struggle to figure out how set up Cloudstack in a small
configuration with a few servers and a single public IP.
The documentation on networking is jumbled about and so unclear that I can only
point out why it is not clear but can not figure out the truth sufficiently
well to actually fix it.
I still don't know where the sources for the drawings are kept even though I
have asked several times.
It needs a team approach with someone who knows the truth and someone who can
write it down so that someone who did not write the code can figure out what to
do.
The biggest problem with programmers writing the user documentation is that
they are so caught up in the exceptions and special cases.
They spent a lot of time figuring out how to handle these oddball cases that
they feel that these triumphs must be on the front page.
They forget to explain the 95% case and lace the description of the main flow
with notes about these interesting exceptions.
That is not just true for Cloudstack but is a general problem with
documentation just because we are all human.
They also forget that the user does not want to be an expert in the topic but
wants to know enough to get the thing running.
The user has a lot of other problems and does not to become a developer in
order to get this to work.
In my case, I really need to get some internal applications (accounting, SCM,
issue tracking, Maven repo, 20 web sites etc.) running on virtual machines in
an environment that is easy to manage. I want to support clients who I am
supporting as users of other systems - just want simple low volume services to
support my supporting of their users.
I only expect to have 4 servers, one NIC per machine to support 1 transaction
per second on a busy day I may get down to 2 servers if Cloudstack works well
and allows me to manage test servers and run docker nicely.
I do not want to know enough to be the network administrator at Google or
Amazon.
This should not be hard to implement and from what I have seen it is not but
the networking docs are a major barrier to acceptance by mid-market companies -
300-1000 users with 1 or 2 System Admins who have to support all of the
operations requirements and help developers and application support teams test
and keep production systems running.
Ron
On 03/03/2016 6:22 AM, Mario Giammarco wrote:
Simon Weller <sweller@...> writes:
I do agree that the docs are confusing, especially if you have a limited
knowledge of networking concepts.
In terms of the complexity, a lot of that has to do with the fact that
every company has different service
requirements and ACS needs to be flexible enough to accommodate very
different underlying needs.
Not agree. Even with good knowledge documentation is confusing because:
- it assumes you are always in the use case of "I have plenty of routable ips"
- it forgets to say that two system vms are create to manage routing and
secondary storage
- it does not say that cloudstack manager can rewrite your host configuration
It's always best to start with a basic zone, unless you REALLY need some
functionality within an advanced
zone. As soon as you move into advanced zone networking, you need to have
a good understanding of layer 2/3
networking.
I was able to make my cloudstack network working only when I skipped basic
zone and used advanced zone
--
Ron Wheeler
President
Artifact Software Inc
email: rwhee...@artifact-software.com
skype: ronaldmwheeler
phone: 866-970-2435, ext 102
