openstack user research: what have we learnt?

OpenStack User Research:What Have We Learnt?

Ju Lim, Red HatOpenStack UX (Core Team)julim@redhat.comjulim on #openstack-ux

28 October 2015

Background

● A little about me

● A little about OpenStack UX

o Working to improve the overall OpenStack end-to-end experience for operators, users, developers, etc.

o Members from across the community (EMC, HP, IBM, Intel, Puppet Labs, Rackspace, Red Hat)

● Getting involved

● Q&A

User Research: What Have We Done?

Focuses on understanding of user behaviors, needs, and motivations through observation techniques, task analysis, and other feedback methodologies to help inform user-centered design

Recent user research work by the OpenStack-UX team:

● Personas development based on user interviews (Oct 2015)

● Nova to Neutron migration interviews and survey (July - Sept 2015)

● Horizon Usability Testing on Launch Instance (Aug 2015)

PersonasA persona represents a cluster of users who exhibit similar behavioral

patterns in their purchasing decisions, use of technology or products,

preferences, lifestyle choices, and the like. It can help inform design

decisions made during product development.

● OpenStack Personas EcosystemPersonas help us design and build correctly the first time rather than spending the same money or more with multiple redesigns, redevelopment, increased customer support costs, etc.

Meet our Latest PersonasCollaboration amongst various organizations: HP, IBM, Intel,

RackSpace, Red Hat at the October 2015 Persona Workshop

(Etherpad)

Additional persona work on:

● Infrastructure Architect

● Service Administrator

● Cloud Operators

● Domain Administrator

● DevOps EngineerPersonas developed

based on interviews & surveys of real users

Nova Network to Neutron Migration● Help OpenStack community to understand the barriers with migrating from

Nova to Neutron and why people are not migrating

● Interviews conducted in July-August 2015, followed by Sept 2015 survey, to

ensure validation by larger community

● HP, Red Hat, and OpenStack Foundation collaborated on this investigation

● Nova Network use is decreasing -- currently 16% of OpenStack deployments

(October 2015 User Survey)

● Still a fair number of users with simple (flat) networking needs

● For simple networking needs, users prefer to stay with Nova as it meets a very

high majority of end-users’ needs

Main Reasons for Staying with Nova Network

● Concerns with complexity of migrating to Neutron

● Concerns with manageability and troubleshooting in Neutron

● Insufficient time and/or resources to migrate to Neutron

● Networking needs are already met by Nova Network

● Features that Neutron offers are not of interest/benefit to Nova Network

users

● Unsure which Neutron plug-in to deploy

● No plans to migrate to Neutron unless Nova Network is deprecated

● Concerns about Neutron stability

● Neutron does not scale as well as Nova Network

Nova Network to Neutron Migration Barriers

● Neutron scalability

● Concerns around feature parity and scalability with Nova Network

● The need that end-users have to setup Neutron virtual networks and

security groups as part of Launch Instance workflow

● Limited high availability for L3 agents

● Distributed virtual routing (DVR) limitations for environments with

limited IPv4 addresses

● Lack of ability to swap out plug-ins easily

● Limited scalability of security groups

Neutron Concerns Post-Nova Network Migration

● Neutron scalability

● Limited high availability for L3 agents

● Inability to share networks by subset of projects

● Inability to have Layer 2 domain scoped to a certain group of hosts, and be able

to define that in Neutron

● Limited scalability of security groups

● Limited high availability for LBaaS

● Lack of partitioning mechanism for cells

● Concerns with regard to IPAM support

● Inability to share security groups between projects

Neutron Concerns Post-Nova Network Migration (contd.)

● Requires end users to setup virtual networks and security groups as part of

Launch Instance workflow

● Lack of ability to swap out plug-ins easily

● Distributed virtual routing (DVR) limitations for environments with limited IPv4

addresses

● Inability to specify primary IP for a host

● Inability to map multiple floating IPs to an instance

● Uses up more IP addresses vs. Nova Network

● Concerns around feature parity and scalability with Nova Network

More details at Neutron Migration Study.

Usability TestingHorizon: Launch Instance Workflow validation (August 2015)

● Horizon Launch Instance Validation Scenario and Tasks

● Horizon Launch Instance Validation Issues

● OpenStack UX Wiki: https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/UX

● Mailing List: openstack-dev@lists.openstack.org with the (email) subject

using the tag [UX]

● IRC: #openstack-ux

● Bi-weekly Friday meetings @ 1500 UTC

○ https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Meetings/UX

More User Research Requests? More Info?

THE END