oVirt Node's Future Regarding CentOS Stream
So I just finished migrating my 4.3 engine to 4.4 on a brand new RHvEL8 install; next step is to upgrade the hosts. When I first started with oVirt I used my own CentOS installs, but quickly decided that it made no sense for my use case. Now I am looking at upgrading from 4.3 to 4.4 and asking myself the same question. Up to now oVirt node has been using the same exact OS I would have used +/- a few extra packages, but with the traditional CentOS going away it really depends on what the new oVirt nodes are going to be based on. I have a feeling the answer to that question is CentOS Stream, which I don't feel comfortable with for this task. While I am sure the developers will test the combination before releasing a new node, they are still only testing whatever specific hardware combination they have. There could be numerous weird bugs that will only show up in certain situations. If Stream was as stable as an EL release, there wouldn't be EL releases. I also appreciate the fa ct that oVirt is itself a work in progress, but the stable branch is considerably more like an EL release than a stream. Anyway, back to the point. Just want to confirm the future for node is stream before I go wasting time building my own EL8 hosts.
Il giorno lun 29 mar 2021 alle ore 19:49 <eshwayri@gmail.com> ha scritto:
So I just finished migrating my 4.3 engine to 4.4 on a brand new RHvEL8 install; next step is to upgrade the hosts. When I first started with oVirt I used my own CentOS installs, but quickly decided that it made no sense for my use case. Now I am looking at upgrading from 4.3 to 4.4 and asking myself the same question. Up to now oVirt node has been using the same exact OS I would have used +/- a few extra packages, but with the traditional CentOS going away it really depends on what the new oVirt nodes are going to be based on. I have a feeling the answer to that question is CentOS Stream, which I don't feel comfortable with for this task. While I am sure the developers will test the combination before releasing a new node, they are still only testing whatever specific hardware combination they have. There could be numerous weird bugs that will only show up in certain situations. If Stream was as stable as an EL release, there wouldn't be EL releases. I also appreciate the fa ct that oVirt is itself a work in progress, but the stable branch is considerably more like an EL release than a stream. Anyway, back to the point. Just want to confirm the future for node is stream before I go wasting time building my own EL8 hosts.
Hi, yes, the future of oVirt Node as built and tested within the oVirt project is going to be CentOS Stream. Specifically for 4.4.6 the intention is to provide two builds of oVIrt Node: one based on CentOS Linux and one on CentOS Stream. Please note that nothing will block any other CentOS-Like distribution to build an oVirt Node based on their own repositories plus oVirt packages and ship it. If you will feel more comfortable running on a RHEL rebuild rather than on CentOS Stream you can try getting the communities performing RHEL rebuilds engaged. Right now the resources of the oVirt project are not enough to keep building and testing oVirt for multiple distributions. -- Sandro Bonazzola MANAGER, SOFTWARE ENGINEERING, EMEA R&D RHV Red Hat EMEA <https://www.redhat.com/> sbonazzo@redhat.com <https://www.redhat.com/> *Red Hat respects your work life balance. Therefore there is no need to answer this email out of your office hours.*
As long as CentOS was downstream of RHEL, it was a base so solid it might have been better than the oVirt node image, even if that was theoretically going through some full stack QA testing. But with CentOS [Up]Stream you get beta quality for the base and then the various acquired parts that make up the oVirt house of cards on top. If then the oVirt node OS were to go through full-stack QA, that could be quite the better choice. But I'm more and more inclined to believe that the if is a false and any testing is just unit testing. Around Christmas VDO got dropped from a kernel update of CentOS8 (still non-stream) and my 4.4 oVirt HCI farm dropped dead, until I found out what happend. To me that was the final straw: I will phase oVirt out with CentOS7. IBM may have a few more paying customers, but oVirt will lose the edge, the only place outside the cloud where RedHat can grow without being taxed by the cloud service providers.
Il giorno mar 20 apr 2021 alle ore 03:45 Thomas Hoberg <thomas@hoberg.net> ha scritto:
As long as CentOS was downstream of RHEL, it was a base so solid it might have been better than the oVirt node image, even if that was theoretically going through some full stack QA testing.
But with CentOS [Up]Stream you get beta quality for the base and then the various acquired parts that make up the oVirt house of cards on top.
If then the oVirt node OS were to go through full-stack QA, that could be quite the better choice. But I'm more and more inclined to believe that the if is a false and any testing is just unit testing.
You're welcome to join oVirt QA initiative: https://www.ovirt.org/develop/projects/project-qa.html and improve oVirt quality :-) I just want to note here that despite oVirt Node is moving to CentOS Stream, you can still install oVirt on RHEL, CentOS Linux and any other RHEL derivatives which doesn't break compatibility with RHEL. We have people who started trying oVirt on Alma Linux and pushing patches to support it (see Bug 1942023 <https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1942023> - [RFE] host-deploy: Allow adding an AlmaLinux host) and I would personally be happy to collaborate with any distribution willing to support oVirt.
Around Christmas VDO got dropped from a kernel update of CentOS8 (still non-stream) and my 4.4 oVirt HCI farm dropped dead, until I found out what happend.
I can't respond for CentOS QA, but you can get in touch with them https://wiki.centos.org/QaWiki
To me that was the final straw: I will phase oVirt out with CentOS7. IBM may have a few more paying customers, but oVirt will lose the edge, the only place outside the cloud where RedHat can grow without being taxed by the cloud service providers.
-- Sandro Bonazzola MANAGER, SOFTWARE ENGINEERING, EMEA R&D RHV Red Hat EMEA <https://www.redhat.com/> sbonazzo@redhat.com <https://www.redhat.com/> *Red Hat respects your work life balance. Therefore there is no need to answer this email out of your office hours.*
participants (3)
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eshwayri＠gmail.com -
Sandro Bonazzola -
Thomas Hoberg