COSMOSCommunityMeeting20061026

COSMOS Main Page > Minutes of Community Calls

Logistics Time: 1:00-2:00pm ET

Call in number, US: 888 241 8547

Call in number, international: 719 884 0812

Pass code: 999451

Minutes

• Attendees:
  • Craig Thomas (Groundwork opensource);
  • Peter Dorfman (Sybase);
  • Don Ebright (Compuware):
  • Oliver Cole (OC Systems);
  • Vasya Gorhkov (CTO from OCS)
  • Brian Vetter (Alterpoint)
  • Valentina Popescu (IBM)
  • Mark Weitzel (IBM)
  • Toni Drapkin (IBM)
  • David Skeen (IBM)
  • William Vambenepe (HP)

Topics: Welcome new folks to the community Brian Vetter from Alterpoint and Vasya Gorhkov from OCS.

During the review of the proposal a suggestion was made and accepted by the group that we add reference to WS-man once we complete more of the use case work. At that time we should go back and make sure the proposal scope is still in alignment.

Review of use case progress & discussion of high level architecture - Craig

During the course of this conversation, there was a discussion regarding scope of the project. The team discussed if the project should include the user interface and the data collection. Overall, the assembled team agreed it was important to keep the project whole in order to provide a limited and basic set of function for "monitoring" / "observing" that demonstrated the use of the instrumentation, SML, and overall COSMOS framework.

The group recommended the Monitor UI component start by focusing on a minimal set of information needed to connect with the data collection and resource modeling efforts as they are a core part of the infrastructure which will define what should be surfaced in the UI. The UI work will also help define the requirements in other areas, e.g. data collection. The objective is to have "just enough" of each to demonstrate the proper usage and extension of the framework.

Direction is to separate the work into two categories: near term deliverables vs. longer term mission.

• There is a distinction between the set of user tools provided to the different roles. A Developer needs a more detailed set of tools than those targeted towards a Systems Admin. For example, the Monitor UI will be limited today, however a Developer in an Eclipse environment needs to have a more detailed set of information available to them. This is tied to the work item discussed last week where we need to position COSMOS relative to other eclipse projects, e.g. TPTP, is just one of those. See COSMOSProjectRelationships 
• Part of "Build to Manage" implies build to monitor but the framework does not need to cover all aspects at the outset.
• The UI may need to surface aspects of the runtime but it also must be extensible to support vendor specific plug-in's similar to a toolkit.

Everyone agreed participation of systems management vendors is a key part of the success of the project. One purpose of the project is to provide componentry for these vendors to reuse. An action item was taken to begin to articulate how COSMOS differentiates itself from the commercial offerings.

• Don Ebright and Craig Thomas volunteered to seed this page with some of their thoughts. See: Commercial Differentiation

Where does SML fit in? Discussion around SML concluded the project should leverage SML in a way that the interfaces to data are practical - which they are not today. The subprojects of COSMOS must be able to work together and should not duplicate what is found in other projects. We need tooling that is focused on helping developers create manageable pieces of code. SML will not do everything by itself - we will need GUI type tooling to surface the information but we don't need another version of open source tooling for monitoring. Tooling is needed for defining and creating SML models and the proposal needs to be updated to represent SML in the architecture picture.

SML is viewed as a key enabling technology for the COSMOS project. The initial scope of the resource modeling workgroup will be on the use cases supporting the creation/manipulation of SML based models.

A work item was taken to understand how SML based models can be used as the integration technology to bring together the COSMOS lifecycle, from instrumentation to basic observation ("monitoring"??).

• Don Ebright/Craig Thomas/Mark Weitzel volunteered to start this effort.

Although SML is viewed as the key enableling technology, there was varying degrees of knowledge of SML among the group and those less familiar with it would like to understand in more details how SML can be used to solve integration issues.

Build to Manage: These use cases largely reflect the work that has been contributed through TPTP. The work posted is an established starting point and the team will focus on what is needed moving forward.

Project Create Status: Mark asked the team to make sure they review by next community meeting. Comments should be posted to the wiki or newsgroup.

• Ref: COSMOS Project Creation Review

Summary of action items:

• Document how COSMOS differentiates itself from commercial offerings - Don/Craig
  • See: Commercial Differentiation
• Each team will look at how these will be consumed into the commercial products. How much out of the box utility is needed by COSMOS? - Don, Craig (Part of the Differentiation discussion)
• Document how SML based models can be used as the integration technology to bring together the COSMOS lifecycle, from instrumentation to basic "observation" ("monitoring"??).
  • Don Ebright/Craig Thomas/Mark Weitzel volunteered to start this effort.
• What is needed through a toolkit to extend COSMOS - Peter.
• Need to come back and look at data repository - Peter
• William will work on the resource modeling subteam along with Brian and Valentina. Valentina will be the focal point.
  • This team will focus on defining a set of usecases for Resource Modeling sub-project. The usecases will be defined around the development of tools for validating and editing SML documents.

EclipseCon;

• Group would like to have some presentations at Eclipse Con. Registration deadlines are nearing.
  • Judy (OCSystems) and Toni(IBM) working to coordinate and post a message on the newsgroup to allow folks to volunteer.
• Ideas discussed are:
  • Panel discussion on using open source software for Systems Management
  • Presentation on Resource modeling based on SML
  • Overview on COSMOS
  • Demo
  • Poster
  • Table topic
  • BoF

See COSMOSEclipseConTopics for details.