2021-08-27 - Sys Ops & Management SIG Agenda and Notes

Owned by Ingolf Kuss
Last updated: Aug 27, 2021 by James Fuller
3 min read

Date

Attendees

Ingolf Kuss James Fuller jroot Brandon Tharp Tod Olson Ian Walls Hkaplanian jpnelson Steffen Köhler

Goal

Discussion items

TimeItemWhoNotes

Find a note takerIngolf

Documentation of Integrations

Let us return to the List of Integrations which we had discussed earlier.

Discovery Integration will be a good starting point.

Here is the Spreadsheet we discussed: FOLIO Source Data and Integrations  (in particular, see the "Detailed Inventory" tab)

Also, look at this whole section: List of Integrations - System Operations and Management SIG - FOLIO Wiki


Operational Technical Debt

Technical Debt, right now, seems to be focused more on development, less on production.

We see the following things as Operational Technical Debt and want to bring them to the TC:

  • ...
  • ...
  • Observation: Deployment of a complete system is becoming more and more difficult from release to release, as new features are being added. 
    • Possible ways out 
      • Is it possible to automate the deployment of newly added features ?
      • Maybe make more parts of the system optional, not part of platform complete ?

Meeting Notes

  1. Operational technical debt
    1. Weaknesses TAMU sees
      1. Documentation is lacking is sysops
        1. How to get modules spun up: ports, DB connections, special parameters, upgrade notes, etc
      2. Consistency in logging
        1. Hard to configure
      3. Footprint of infrastructure is growing (ES, Kafka, object storage)
        1. Proof of concepts are making their way into mainline
      4. Good thing - Helm charts are coming out for a lot of backend modules
      5. OKAPI is the discovery layer for services and you need to tell it about everything, it is not very "smart"
      6. Dependency resolution trips folks up a lot during releases
      7. Seem to be a lot of required innate knowledge that is not well documented
    2. Harry
      1. FOLIO is growing rapidly
        1. Good and bad aspects to the grow
        2. Do we need to release all these Applications every time?
          1. Could the project move to an App Store model?
        3. Harry would like to see a smaller core
          1. This was echoed by TAMU
          2. Modules domain boundaries are complicated
            1. Where APIs overlap, interact, and potentially duplicate
              1. Organizations in Circulation are reused in ERM
              2. Example: Data Import is spread across half a dozen modules
      2. At Tech Leads there is an open jira issue for defining Platform Minimum
        1. Future integration with Senopia(sp?) (all they need is Inventory and Users, maybe only users)
    3. OKAPI good citizen document doesn't feel fully utilized
    4. What are the App and (other) SIGs thinking about here?
    5. Brandon brought up the need for a "Manifesto" for us to aspire to
      1. Containers, Cloud (on-prem or off), 12 factor App, etc
      2. This was tried at the start of the project, the author is still in the project. That author may feel that we have drifted from those principles.
      3. How does this overlap with Strategic Vision? Should this be part of it?
        1. Seems reasonable, but may need better documentation and some distinct work to bring down to a developer level
          1. Is the work being done removed from the Vision of the project?
          2. Roadmap group is trying to bridge this gap
    6. Ian is spending a lot of time in the App Acceptance group
      1. Current goal "Does LDP go into Kiwi?"
        1. Criteria: Mod should be testable, secure, i18n compatible. There are also values that harder to use during those reviews
        2. LDP issue is very on point
        3. Harry notes that the Release Process is getting harder
          1. Less time for development and more time on release process and testing
    7. Harry - Goal was a continuous release model, it seems that the project is going away from that to fewer-larger releases
    8. James - Clear and consistent Semantic Versioning across the entire project
    9. Tod
      1. Figuring out what modules are deployed together is very related to Domain Boundaries conversation
      2. Testing and Release size
        1. Small Core vs FOLIO Product (need to have 'Iris' be a polished product)
        2. Todd sees a need to stabilize APIs and improve contracts between modules
    10. Brandon would like to see self-contained upgrades and module registration
    11. Harry
      1. Should SysOps SIG talk to TC and/or PC? They might not understand the impact of the situation on our work
    12. Tod - This convo today is partially to get something to say to TC, would be good to bring to them and PC
      1. Need a list of concerns for TC
      2. Operational documentation need
    13. Ian - Avenue to bring this PC is via Kiwi release (features were ranked, but there was a push for cleaning up what we already have)
      1. Feature competition in marketplace vs Operational concerns
    14. We need a document
      1. James and Ingolf volunteer to help start a wiki page to document this and link any JIRA issues
      2. Harry suggests setting a deadline for the doc and starting to get on the TC agenda
      3. 9/1 TC meeting, PC has agenda space
      4. 8/31 document goal, need to sell WHY this is needed and good.
        1. Ingolf to create Wiki Page

Action items

  •  James - Create Wiki
  • Ingolf - Talk to people to get us invited to PC/TC