terraform-provider-feilong
a project by e_bischoff
Updated 6 months ago. 6 hacker ♥️. 2 followers.

Project Description

People need to test operating systems and applications on s390 platform.

Installation from scratch solutions include:

  • just deploy and provision manually add-emoji (with the help of ftpboot script, if you are at SUSE)
  • use s3270 terminal emulation (used by openQA people?)
  • use LXC from IBM to start CP commands and analyze the results
  • use zPXE to do some PXE-alike booting (used by the orthos team?)
  • use tessia to install from scratch using autoyast
  • use libvirt for s390 to do some nested virtualization on some already deployed z/VM system
  • directly install a Linux kernel on a LPAR and use kvm + libvirt from there

Deployment from image solutions include:

  • use ICIC web interface (openstack in disguise, contributed by IBM)
  • use ICIC from the openstack terraform provider (used by Rancher QA)
  • use zvm_ansible to control SMAPI
  • connect directly to SMAPI low-level socket interface

IBM Cloud Infrastructure Center (ICIC) harnesses the Feilong API, but you can use Feilong without installing ICIC, provided you set up a "z/VM cloud connector" into one of your VMs following this schema.

What about writing a terraform Feilong provider, just like we have the terraform libvirt provider? That would allow to transparently call Feilong from your main.tf files to deploy and destroy resources on your system/z.

Other Feilong-based solutions include:

  • make libvirt Feilong-aware
  • simply call Feilong from shell scripts with curl
  • use zvmconnector client python library from Feilong
  • use zthin part of Feilong to directly command SMAPI.

Goal for Hackweek 23

My final goal is to be able to easily deploy and provision VMs automatically on a z/VM system, in a way that people might enjoy even outside of SUSE.

My technical preference is to write a terraform provider plugin, as it is the approach that involves the least software components for our deployments, while remaining clean, and compatible with our existing development infrastructure.

Goals for Hackweek 24

Feilong provider works and is used internally by SUSE Manager team. Let's push it forward!

Let's add support for fiberchannel disks and multipath.

Goals for Hackweek 25

  • Finish support for fiberchannel disks and multipath
  • Fix problems with registration on hashicorp providers registry
  • Finish the U part of CRUD
  • Move from private repos to Open Mainframe project

Resources

Outcome

Join this project

Looking for hackers with the skills:

s390 mainframe zvm golang terraform deployment

This project is part of:

Hack Week 23 Hack Week 24

Activity

  • 7 months ago: pinvernizzi liked this project.
  • over 1 year ago: juliogonzalezgil liked this project.
  • over 1 year ago: e_bischoff liked this project.
  • over 1 year ago: mfriesenegger liked this project.
  • over 1 year ago: dgedon liked this project.
  • over 1 year ago: mfranc liked this project.
  • over 1 year ago: e_bischoff started this project.
  • over 1 year ago: e_bischoff added keyword "deployment" to this project.
  • over 1 year ago: e_bischoff added keyword "terraform" to this project.
  • over 1 year ago: e_bischoff added keyword "golang" to this project.
  • over 1 year ago: e_bischoff added keyword "zvm" to this project.
  • over 1 year ago: e_bischoff added keyword "s390" to this project.
  • over 1 year ago: e_bischoff added keyword "mainframe" to this project.
  • over 1 year ago: e_bischoff originated this project.


    • Comments

    • mfriesenegger
      over 1 year ago by mfriesenegger | Reply

      As the Feilong project chair, I like the terraform-feilong-provider project and making libvirt Feilong-aware. I will support your effort!

    • e_bischoff
      over 1 year ago by e_bischoff | Reply

      Thanks for your support Mike. For the moment, I am still not completely sure whether I will take the terraform approach or the libvirt approach. The first one seems to me better, as for practical purposes it's one software layer less for us. I could even pick up something completely different. But so far the terraform provider approach seems the most promising for the least effort.

    • e_bischoff
      over 1 year ago by e_bischoff | Reply

      OK, decision taken, I will stick to the terraform approach.

      The bad part is that I have to code for 2 versions of terraform as we need to support both plugin protocols 5 and 6.

      The good part is that we get a golang library for Feilong for free (there is a project ZVM connector golang but it does not provide marshalling and demarshalling).

    • e_bischoff
      over 1 year ago by e_bischoff | Reply

      We have a working provider and a partial Go library. Mission accomplished, although it would be nice to attract other contributors and fill in the holes.

    • e_bischoff
      over 1 year ago by e_bischoff | Reply

      Go library has now 100% coverage.

      I'm not sure anymore that the protocol 5 provider was useful, but I'll keep maintaining it because it's handy for my tests.

      The provider still lacks R and U parts of CRUD.

    • e_bischoff
      7 months ago by e_bischoff | Reply

      In Feilong source code, some functions are undocumented, mainly around FiberChannel. This means that the Go library is not 100% complete as I thought. I will try to add the missing Go methods as well as the documentation in Feilong itself.

    • e_bischoff
      6 months ago by e_bischoff | Reply

      I have added all missing functions to the Go library. I also wrote the upstream API doc for all missing functions and tried to fix as much as I could the rest of the upstream API doc. That was around one thousand modified documentation lines.

      Using these new functions, and with the help of Mike, I was able to make both FiberChannel and multipath work. We still need ad hoc images though, with multipath-tools package installed and multipathd service enabled. I'll try to get them either from Mike or from the public cloud team.

    • e_bischoff
      6 months ago by e_bischoff | Reply

      The hackweek 24 is getting to its end. I prepared a kind of TODO for hackweek 25, with remaining issues.

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