[cdwg] [wc-discuss] Lustre 2.2.0 released

[Christopher J. Morrone]

On 06/18/2012 08:26 AM, James A Simmons wrote:

> 	Seeing this email and from the working groups phone call shows a lot of
> confusion over what is supported or maintained. So for the last few days
> I stepped backed and asked why is everyone confused. What this shows is
> lack of explaining to the community what a maintenance and a feature
> release are and how they differ. Also the version scheme is not well
> defined.

I agree.  I've been advocating for some time that we need to adopt a 
more Ubuntu-like model.  We're already half way there with our 
every-six-months release.  Next I think we need to adopt regular LTS 
(Long Term Support) releases.

Our "maintenance" releases are currently something like an LTS, but they 
are not well advertised, poorly understood by the community, and 
currently evolve rather organically.

No large site can change major lustre versions every six months.  No 
major vendors will be willing to do that either.  I think we all know 
and agree about that.

But if we don't have a clear plan for which releases with be LTS and 
advertise that AHEAD of time, we'll never sync up on releases, and our 
limited resources will continue to be divided.  Vendors and large sites 
just can't turn on a dime.  We need clear guidance well in advance of a 
maintenance/LTS release if we are going to plan to move to it in a 
reasonable time frame.

My suggestion:

Every 18 months, the release will be designated an LTS release.

If we consider 2.1 an LTS release, that would make the release at the 
end of March 2013 the next LTS release.

I don't care too much about the numbering.  It could be called 2.4, it 
could be called 3.0, whatever.  What is important is that we plan for it 
and advertise it well in advance.

I think that the March 2013 release will have a combination of many 
features that people are interested in, including the OSD rework, DNE1, 
imperative recovery, network request scheduled, just to name a few off 
the top of my head.

I know that LLNL has been testing master for a while now as part of our 
orion-branch testing, and we will continue to test and hammer it on 
Sequoia.  If we are planning to make that release the next LTS, we will 
migrate ALL of our testing resources to exercise that work as soon as 
2.1 is reasonably stable on our production systems.  So my sincere hope 
is that by the time the March 2013 release happens it will be in much 
better shape than the 2.1 release was.

Chris