Server groups (profiles)

[Jason Tucker <ja...@gmail.com>]

Hi folks -

I've noticed a problem that we seem to run into over and over in our
environment, and would like to suggest a way to fix.

Often times, I find that delivery services get assigned to cache servers in
a very inconsistent way, due in part to the fact that assigning severs to a
DS is a very manual process today. It seems to me that there is a need here
to have something like "server group profiles".

For example, for a given CDN you could have a "pre-production" profile
consisting of a small slice of caches, to be used for functional testing.
There would also be a "production" profile, consisting of the full
compliment of caches that should be in use at any given time.

I envision this being used in such a way, that Ops folks would control the
contents of those profiles as needed, and that a default server group
profile (i.e. "production" profile) would be ASSIGNED BY DEFAULT to any
brand new Delivery Service that gets built, unless explicitly overridden.

I think this would really make administration of server assignments much
simpler, as you can do it at a profile level, rather than having to touch
every DS individually to make changes. ALSO, this would solve the
inconsistency problem. ALSO ALSO, I think this should be an absolute
requirement for eventual self-service, because customers that are managing
their own DS'es SHOULD NOT have to care at all about edge server specifics,
or what edges their DS should be assigned to. We've seen that our actual
CDN team members can't always manage these details consistently, so there's
little hope that customers should be expected to do so.

Thanks,

__Jason

Re: Server groups (profiles)

[Rawlin Peters <ra...@gmail.com>]

What if the default server set doesn't make sense for the self-service
user's delivery service? For example, what if their DS only needs
deployed to Denver but the default assignments are in every
cachegroup?

Traditional DS-Server assignments will have to be overhauled with the
Flexible Cachegroup (aka Bring Your Own Topology) effort, and I em
envisioning that there will be a default Topology for DSes to be
assigned to which should probably contain servers from all
cachegroups. There would also be multiple other Topologies that a DS
could be assigned to (e.g. regional), and a self-service user should
be able to choose from some set of those Topologies I'd think. Then
the self-service user can be somewhat in control of _where_ their DS
gets deployed without having to pick individual caches. Operators
would still be in charge of logically grouping servers into Server
Groups and composing those into Topologies, but the choice of Topology
would be left up to the self-service user. We could assign a
visibility level to a Topology so that only self-service-approved
Topologies are visible to self-service users.

- Rawlin

On Wed, Dec 5, 2018 at 1:10 PM Jason Tucker <ja...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Great, thanks Rob! Glad to hear it's already on the roadmap.
>
> __Jason
>
> On Wed, Dec 5, 2018 at 1:01 PM Robert Butts <ro...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > Yep, already part of the Self Service plan. The plan is to add a
> > "default_assignable" field to servers, to indicate which servers are
> > assigned to new delivery services on creation. You're right, it's necessary
> > for Self-Service, or non-operators wouldn't be able to create functioning
> > DSes. And I agree, it doesn't seem reasonable to ever let non-operators
> > make that decision.
> >
> > Full plan/spec is here, that's #8 under "Independent Delivery Service
> > Changes", if you're interested:
> > https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/TC/Traffic+Control++Self+Service+Proposal+for+Change+Integrity#TrafficControlSelfServiceProposalforChangeIntegrity-IndependentDeliveryServiceChanges
> >
> >
> > On Wed, Dec 5, 2018 at 10:52 AM Jason Tucker <ja...@gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> >
> >> Hi folks -
> >>
> >> I've noticed a problem that we seem to run into over and over in our
> >> environment, and would like to suggest a way to fix.
> >>
> >> Often times, I find that delivery services get assigned to cache servers
> >> in
> >> a very inconsistent way, due in part to the fact that assigning severs to
> >> a
> >> DS is a very manual process today. It seems to me that there is a need
> >> here
> >> to have something like "server group profiles".
> >>
> >> For example, for a given CDN you could have a "pre-production" profile
> >> consisting of a small slice of caches, to be used for functional testing.
> >> There would also be a "production" profile, consisting of the full
> >> compliment of caches that should be in use at any given time.
> >>
> >> I envision this being used in such a way, that Ops folks would control the
> >> contents of those profiles as needed, and that a default server group
> >> profile (i.e. "production" profile) would be ASSIGNED BY DEFAULT to any
> >> brand new Delivery Service that gets built, unless explicitly overridden.
> >>
> >> I think this would really make administration of server assignments much
> >> simpler, as you can do it at a profile level, rather than having to touch
> >> every DS individually to make changes. ALSO, this would solve the
> >> inconsistency problem. ALSO ALSO, I think this should be an absolute
> >> requirement for eventual self-service, because customers that are managing
> >> their own DS'es SHOULD NOT have to care at all about edge server
> >> specifics,
> >> or what edges their DS should be assigned to. We've seen that our actual
> >> CDN team members can't always manage these details consistently, so
> >> there's
> >> little hope that customers should be expected to do so.
> >>
> >> Thanks,
> >>
> >> __Jason
> >>
> >

Re: Server groups (profiles)

[Jason Tucker <ja...@gmail.com>]

Great, thanks Rob! Glad to hear it's already on the roadmap.

__Jason

On Wed, Dec 5, 2018 at 1:01 PM Robert Butts <ro...@gmail.com>
wrote:

> Yep, already part of the Self Service plan. The plan is to add a
> "default_assignable" field to servers, to indicate which servers are
> assigned to new delivery services on creation. You're right, it's necessary
> for Self-Service, or non-operators wouldn't be able to create functioning
> DSes. And I agree, it doesn't seem reasonable to ever let non-operators
> make that decision.
>
> Full plan/spec is here, that's #8 under "Independent Delivery Service
> Changes", if you're interested:
> https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/TC/Traffic+Control++Self+Service+Proposal+for+Change+Integrity#TrafficControlSelfServiceProposalforChangeIntegrity-IndependentDeliveryServiceChanges
>
>
> On Wed, Dec 5, 2018 at 10:52 AM Jason Tucker <ja...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Hi folks -
>>
>> I've noticed a problem that we seem to run into over and over in our
>> environment, and would like to suggest a way to fix.
>>
>> Often times, I find that delivery services get assigned to cache servers
>> in
>> a very inconsistent way, due in part to the fact that assigning severs to
>> a
>> DS is a very manual process today. It seems to me that there is a need
>> here
>> to have something like "server group profiles".
>>
>> For example, for a given CDN you could have a "pre-production" profile
>> consisting of a small slice of caches, to be used for functional testing.
>> There would also be a "production" profile, consisting of the full
>> compliment of caches that should be in use at any given time.
>>
>> I envision this being used in such a way, that Ops folks would control the
>> contents of those profiles as needed, and that a default server group
>> profile (i.e. "production" profile) would be ASSIGNED BY DEFAULT to any
>> brand new Delivery Service that gets built, unless explicitly overridden.
>>
>> I think this would really make administration of server assignments much
>> simpler, as you can do it at a profile level, rather than having to touch
>> every DS individually to make changes. ALSO, this would solve the
>> inconsistency problem. ALSO ALSO, I think this should be an absolute
>> requirement for eventual self-service, because customers that are managing
>> their own DS'es SHOULD NOT have to care at all about edge server
>> specifics,
>> or what edges their DS should be assigned to. We've seen that our actual
>> CDN team members can't always manage these details consistently, so
>> there's
>> little hope that customers should be expected to do so.
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> __Jason
>>
>

Re: Server groups (profiles)

[Robert Butts <ro...@gmail.com>]

Yep, already part of the Self Service plan. The plan is to add a
"default_assignable" field to servers, to indicate which servers are
assigned to new delivery services on creation. You're right, it's necessary
for Self-Service, or non-operators wouldn't be able to create functioning
DSes. And I agree, it doesn't seem reasonable to ever let non-operators
make that decision.

Full plan/spec is here, that's #8 under "Independent Delivery Service
Changes", if you're interested:
https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/TC/Traffic+Control++Self+Service+Proposal+for+Change+Integrity#TrafficControlSelfServiceProposalforChangeIntegrity-IndependentDeliveryServiceChanges


On Wed, Dec 5, 2018 at 10:52 AM Jason Tucker <ja...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi folks -
>
> I've noticed a problem that we seem to run into over and over in our
> environment, and would like to suggest a way to fix.
>
> Often times, I find that delivery services get assigned to cache servers in
> a very inconsistent way, due in part to the fact that assigning severs to a
> DS is a very manual process today. It seems to me that there is a need here
> to have something like "server group profiles".
>
> For example, for a given CDN you could have a "pre-production" profile
> consisting of a small slice of caches, to be used for functional testing.
> There would also be a "production" profile, consisting of the full
> compliment of caches that should be in use at any given time.
>
> I envision this being used in such a way, that Ops folks would control the
> contents of those profiles as needed, and that a default server group
> profile (i.e. "production" profile) would be ASSIGNED BY DEFAULT to any
> brand new Delivery Service that gets built, unless explicitly overridden.
>
> I think this would really make administration of server assignments much
> simpler, as you can do it at a profile level, rather than having to touch
> every DS individually to make changes. ALSO, this would solve the
> inconsistency problem. ALSO ALSO, I think this should be an absolute
> requirement for eventual self-service, because customers that are managing
> their own DS'es SHOULD NOT have to care at all about edge server specifics,
> or what edges their DS should be assigned to. We've seen that our actual
> CDN team members can't always manage these details consistently, so there's
> little hope that customers should be expected to do so.
>
> Thanks,
>
> __Jason
>