Server/Use Cases

This is a draft document!
This document is a work-in-progress draft and has not been agreed upon yet.

Discussion

• 'Discussion of Fedora Server use-cases' mailing list thread
• 'Stuff that should be our target going forward ?' mailing list thread

Draft Use Cases

1. Users of Fedora server will be able to install - at their option - a select set of software with graphical interfaces, and they will be able to successfully use these graphical interfaces via trusted X-forwarding (ssh -Y). [1]
   • The set of GUI software that should be installable and usable via trusted X-forwarding on Fedora Server will be defined by the Server working group. [2]
   • Draft list of GUI software to be supported.
2. Provide a platform for acting as a node in an OpenStack rack.
3. Provide a platform and simple setup for certain infrastructure services, e.g.
   • FreeIPA Domain Controller
   • BIND DNS
   • DHCP
   • Database server (both free and commercial).
     • (Should Fedora care about proprietary ones? We shouldn't be hostile, but neither cater for them too much, most of the contributors wouldn't have the means to do it anyway, and proprietary vendors can better install on RHEL and interact with RH. --simo)
   • Samba Ad Domain Controller
     • (that is mostly blocked due to upstream work, and I am not sure we can do much here, beyond encouraging upstream. --simo)
4. Provide simple setup of a file-server (on par with Windows).
5. Platform for deploying web applications with high-value frameworks.
   • Frameworks:
     • Ruby on Rails
     • Django
     • Turbogears
     • Node.js
   • (Are we going to do this via Software Collections? The main issue I see with these is that various apps requires at times, conflicting versions of the same base framework/language. --simo )
6. Make Fedora the best platform to deploy JBoss applications.
7. Come up with standardized mechanisms for centralized monitoring
8. Come up with standardized mechanisms for centralized configuration and management
9. Simple enrollment into FreeIPA and Active Directory domains
10. Provide the best platform for secure application deployment
11. Isolation of OS from applications
12. Isolation of applications from each other
13. Isolation of application users from each other
14. Management of application resource consumption
15. Simplify management and deployment.[1]
16. Deliver the world's best leading edge DevOps platform.

Questions

• Items under "Provide the best platform for secure application deployment" - are cgroups / containers meant here?
• Difference between server and devops?
• Difference between Server and Cloud products vs compute nodes?
  • "Traditional servers [like pets] have names, personalities, and are lovingly cared for. When they get sick, you diagnose the problem and carefully nurse them back to health, sometimes at great expense. Like pets. On the other hand, cattle sre numbered, and thought of as basically identical, and if they get sick, you put them down and get another one." --mattdm
  • "This was my thinking, I thought the cloud WG is about building lean images that do not have much in the way of wizards, installers, and

hand-holding software, but are focused toward rapid deployment, either as lean hosts or as computing/elastic guests, all controlled via some configuration engine like puppet etc... basically single task machines. I see the server WG more about building heavier, long term, multipurpose servers (be it on bare metal or as guest)." --simo

• "I would say single purpose servers/vm/containers all fall under the server WG as well but I think we should be looking at

this from application stand point as in which of those services/daemon fall under the server WG and that means we could make up to about 500 550 applications or "products" that can be deployed on bare metal in vm's or containers we would be delivering." --johannbg

• "I think it would make most sense for Cloud and Server to "share applications", i.e. the same application package can be deployed

either within a single-purpose Cloud image (automatically managed for horizontal scaling), or as a single instance within a Server (one of many applications running on this particular Server). Given that, I think the Server WG should indeed choose a very limited set of "applications" / "services" to include within the Server product and to make management of this limited set of services really good." --mitr

• Balance between OS packages and more rapidly moving frameworks in collections...