[Labs-l] Input requested: evaluation criteria for selecting a Kubernetes based Tool Labs workflow product

[Bryan Davis]

For various reasons including a lack of upstream distribution support,
the Labs team is working to replace the long used Sun/Oracle Grid
Engine service in Tool Labs. Kubernetes was selected last year [0] as
the basic cluster management solution.

Transitioning from SGE to Kubernetes (k8s) will require new utilities
and deployment workflows for Tool Labs users. Initial efforts [1] are
focused on drop-in replacement for existing workflows, but do not take
full advantage of the services offered by k8s. There are several FLOSS
projects that build on Kubernetes to provide a complete Platform as a
Service (PaaS) system. A typical PaaS will provide tools to assist in
managing multiple base containers, versioning container instances, and
deploying containers to the k8s grid. Using a third-party product with
an active user and developer community would provide benefits over
inventing new home-grown tooling and processes. Two major benefits
would be better documentation for our users and reduced maintenance
burden for our Labs technical team.

The first step in the process to select a PaaS or other workflow
system is to develop a set of evaluation criteria. We need a list of
must/should/may evaluation criteria for comparing solutions. These
should cover both operational and end user concerns. I've opened
T136265 [2] to collect this list of criteria.

Please provide input on Phabricator reguarding functionality that you
can't live without in the current grid engine system and features that
you find badly missing from other "cloud" systems you may have used.
Input from users with experience using Heroku, Google App Engine,
Digital Ocean droplets, and other PaaS offerings is especially
welcome.


[0]: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T106475
[1]: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T129309
[2]: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T136265

Bryan
-- 
Bryan Davis              Wikimedia Foundation    <bd808 at wikimedia.org>
[[m:User:BDavis_(WMF)]]  Sr Software Engineer            Boise, ID USA
irc: bd808                                        v:415.839.6885 x6855