BOSH stable versions

[ooo pfm]

Hi, all

A few questions about using BOSH.

1. There are many bosh stable-versions in http://boshartifacts.cloudfoundry.org, stable-2605 was published in 06/13, while stable-2606 in 06/18 and stable-2611 in 06/19.

What's the strategy to publish a stable-version? New build, or new features, or other reasons?

2. The latest BOSH version, is stable-2619 which published in 06/27, while cf-v173, still using BOSH stable-2200, and stemcell version 2366.

Why cf does not use latest BOSH version? In cf v169, the stemcell version updated from 2200 to 2366,  what's the reason for stemcell updating? 

Is there some "real stable version", that passed all tests, and be used in production enviroment, while other versions may pass only part of tests? 

3. About go agent. I want to use openstack trusty go-agent stemcell, but there is only two published versions: 2539, and 2605. It may because of some CI failed.

I try to deploy cf v172, using bosh-stemcell-2539-openstack-kvm-ubuntu-trusty-go_agent. It seems everything is ok. 

While the go agent stemcell is ok, why cf does not use go agent stemcell? Is there some problems in go agent? Or because it has not be tested in production enviroment?

What should I do before I try to deploy cf to a production enviroment, using the go agent stemcell?

[Greg Oehmen]

Hi:

These are very good questions.  Here's the current situation:  

1.  What's the strategy to publish a stable-version? New build, or new features, or other reasons?

A new version is published every time the BOSh team's CI build completes successfully (when a 'green build' occurs).  At that point, all commits to the code base since the last 'green build' are pushed to master.  

2.  Why cf does not use latest BOSH version? 

In cf v169, the stemcell version updated from 2200 to 2366,  what's the reason for stemcell updating? 
Is there some "real stable version", that passed all tests, and be used in production enviroment, while other versions may pass only part of tests? 

The BOSH build pipeline tests take approximately 4 hours end-to-end.  This means that there is the potential for a very rapid succession of BOSH versions.  Right now and over the past few weeks, this cycle has slowed and even been manually halted as we've seen a proliferation of stemcell types (3 IAAS x 3 OS (centos/Ubuntu lucid/Ubuntu trusty x Ruby & Go agent) and thus an expanded matrix of build tests that all have to go green.  But when the matrix is simplified (post migration from ruby to go and post migration from lucid to trusty) our cadence of delivering versions will increase.  At the same time, CF (actually the runtime team) is on about a 1.5 to 2 week release cadence.  Basically, they take current from BOSH at a certain time that works for them.  Also, all green builds pass all tests.  In the last 6 months that I've been on the team, we have created two problematic stemcell builds.  Both were allowed to be created by what we identified as a gap in our test coverage and quickly covered.

3.  I want to use openstack trusty go-agent stemcell, but there is only two published versions: 2539, and 2605. It may because of some CI failed

This is not because CI failed but because our CI does not have the bandwidth to produce go agent stemcells for vsphere and openstack on a continuous basis.  really, the BOSh agent is an internal mechanism and the language it is written in should be of no consequence to BOSH users beyond the intended performance improvements over ruby.  So, getting to prod with go agent will enable us to stop creating ruby stemcells and thus have the bandwidth to create vsphere and openstack go stemcells.

 

While the go agent stemcell is ok, why cf does not use go agent stemcell? Is there some problems in go agent? Or because it has not be tested in production enviroment?

What should I do before I try to deploy cf to a production enviroment, using the go agent stemcell?

CF does not use the go agent yet because it is not into production yet.  There are no problems with the go agent.  (You can see the BOSH tracker backlog here to see all stories.)

Best

Greg

Greg Oehmen

Cloud Foundry Product Manager - Bosh

Pivotal

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[ooo pfm]

Thanks Greg,  so there are many stable versions that is really stable.

And I still have some other questions,
1. I built a local ci enviroment that runs unit and integration tests. In some stable versions, like 2611, the ci failed for some tests, which seems like some problem happened in the code. I don't know how the test passed the BOSh team's CI build and completes successfully.

2. What's the reason to push cf, upgrade BOSH version, and STEMCELL version? 

在 2014年7月2日星期三UTC+8上午7时12分34秒，Greg Oehmen写道：

[dmi...@pivotallabs.com]

Responses inline...

On Thursday, July 3, 2014 11:55:34 PM UTC-7, ooo pfm wrote:

Thanks Greg,  so there are many stable versions that is really stable.

And I still have some other questions,
1. I built a local ci enviroment that runs unit and integration tests. In some stable versions, like 2611, the ci failed for some tests, which seems like some problem happened in the code. I don't know how the test passed the BOSh team's CI build and completes successfully.

All official BOSH releases (stemcells, BOSH release, tests, etc) have passed our internal CI. If we find a serious bug with already published assets we will yank them. One important note to make is that not every commit is green, so make sure to check out stable-* tags from git (https://github.com/cloudfoundry/bosh/releases). There are some tests are flaky (always trying to keep those at minimum) or require non-obvious set up, so they might fail -- share with us those failures and we can figure them out together.

 

2. What's the reason to push cf, upgrade BOSH version, and STEMCELL version? 

Updating your CF (or any other deployment) every time we publish new stemcell is not necessary; however, every now and then there are security vulnerabilities in essential system libraries that we patch, so by updating to those versions you get those fixes for free. In addition to that updating stemcell might be required for certain new features (or bug fixes) since BOSH Agent is in the stemcell.

You do not have to update BOSH Director and related components frequently either, though it is always encouraged so that you can receive new features and bug fixes.