[node-devel] Plugin architecture high level design

[Perry Myers]

On 11/16/2011 12:03 PM, kmestery wrote:
> On Nov 16, 2011, at 10:57 AM, Mike Burns wrote:
> 
>> On Wed, 2011-11-16 at 10:48 -0600, kmestery wrote:
>>> Mike:
>>> 
>>> In looking at this, it appears the focus in on third-party
>>> vendors and developers having to rebuild the ovirt-node ISO image
>>> to get their packages included. 

That's not correct...  Maybe the wording in the wiki page is not as good
as it could be, but the intent here is:

* oVirt Node ISO gets in the hands of end user
* ISV builds a 'plugin' and distributes that to end user.  So ISV is
  given tools for building plugins and signing them
* End User has tools to merge the ISV plugin into the ISO, potentially
  allowing merging multiple plugins into the same ISO.  This could be
  integrated into the oVirt Engine GUI as well to make this better from
  an user experience, though initially CLI tools for end users to do
  this make sense

>>> Is there any long term plan to
>>> allow for third-party packages to be loaded onto ovirt-node
>>> instances ala what VMware does on ESXi with their vibtools?
>> 
>> This was simply a first pass at high level design.  Discussions
>> are welcome on what additional features or requirements there are.
>> At the moment, plugins are sort of a nebulous concept (at least to
>> me).  I don't have a firm hold on what's going to be required by
>> various vendors or the end-users.  We can add this as a topic for
>> the node meeting tomorrow.
>> 
> I agree, this is a good discussion for the node meeting tomorrow.
> 
>> As for this specific request, I'm not familiar with what ESXi does,
>> but it sounds like it is something we could look at longer term.
>> 
> ESXi has their own package format, VIB. They provide tools for third
> parties to build and sign VIBs, and then they allow for loading of
> these packages onto ESXi instances. If you look at their stateless
> model, they take the VIBs, package those into images at the vSphere
> level, and allow hosts to boot the compiled images. This allows for
> third party drivers, CIM providers, etc. to be loaded onto ESXi
> hosts, both stateful and stateless. This is something that may be
> desirable for the node as well, to allow for the same sort of third
> party packages to be loaded.

What you just described re: ESX/vSphere is precisely what we are aiming
for here.  If the wording on the wiki didn't convey that, definitely
feel free to collaborate with us and edit the wiki to re-word things to
match what you just described.  :)

Perry