Although there is still a lot of controversy in the realm of cloud computing, OpenStack has in fact become the de facto standard and preferred platform for IaaS cloud platforms. From the training market fiery also proves this point, now OpenStack training has a lot of content is not the same, then what kind of training is the user most need?
This article is not intended to evaluate any openstack training, but to analyze from the perspective of user experience what the user really needs. If there is anything wrong with the opinion of the article, please have a lot of Haihan with our predecessors and Daniel.
About Me
In short, I took the OpenStack product development team, talked about OpenStack, worked as an OpenStack trainer, sold OpenStack private cloud products, and talked to a lot of users about OpenStack, So there is a clear understanding of the whole OpenStack industry.
Target groups for OpenStack training
The OpenStack training I've done is broadly divided into two categories, internal and external.
Internal training is for the inside of the company, because I have brought two teams are to develop OpenStack private cloud products mainly, so I have to train the main target is research and development, operations, pre-sale and sales staff.
Outside the training of many objects, including well-known enterprises, foreign companies and private enterprises and schools, most of the industry in the traditional industry, involving communications, finance, system integration, mainly for research and development, it and pre-sales, training content to OpenStack Foundation and research and development-oriented.
So I defined the OpenStack training target group as: developers, system engineers and OPS, presales, sales, students.
What kind of training is needed for different groups? Sales Staff
There are two ways to do OpenStack business now: products and services. Either way, it's a huge challenge for the traditional sales people. Cloud Platform is not like traditional software, can see at a glance what he is exactly what to do, to solve the user's pain points. And in the enterprise, people who can make decisions are not all technical backgrounds, so they want to explain to them what OpenStack can do and it is difficult.
Therefore, for the sales staff, the training should focus on the following points:
- Use training: I think it's the most effective way to help people understand, regardless of the type of group training, demonstrating how to use OpenStack. But the demo here must set the scene, that is, what our business systems look like in the traditional business landscape, how to deploy after migrating to the cloud platform, and, from this comparison, deepen our understanding of OpenStack. Sales people deepen their understanding of OpenStack or OpenStack products by working with OpenStack. After all, graphics are the most efficient way to remember.
- Understanding what is open Source software: Open source software must be the future trend, if you do not have a clear understanding of open source software, it will not be able to understand the value and significance of the OpenStack project.
- Learn about the history of OpenStack, the OpenStack Foundation, and how the OpenStack community operates: The purpose of learning these is to tell a story to the user, to understand why OpenStack is chosen, and why OpenStack projects have continued vitality, Convince users that using OpenStack will ensure that future infrastructures are flexible to meet business-level agility requirements.
- Case study: The greatest value of the case is education users, VMware spent more than 10 years to educate users, OpenStack can not in a few years to change this situation, so "learn to use other people's case to educate their users", is a very important lesson in the sales staff OpenStack training.
Pre-Sales personnel
Pre-sales personnel not only from the technical level to convince users of the product, but also in conjunction with the user's business system needs to provide construction solutions, many foreign companies in the pre-sales engineers also have to assume the role of building POC environment. Pre-Sales personnel communication is the main object of the enterprise has the actual needs of the business unit, is the most likely to fall to the department, the success or failure of communication determines whether to sign, so need more expertise to meet and the user's communication needs. The focus of the training should be:
- Use training: The same reason, but I think the pre-sales staff also need to stand in the user's perspective to think about how my users will use the cloud platform? What are the issues when the business system is migrated to the platform?
- How to deploy: deployment training has always been the major OpenStack training must-speak content, and 90% of the content is deployed around deployment, such as a well-known enterprise's OpenStack certification training. For pre-sales people, I think it's necessary for OpenStack deployment training. On the one hand, can help the training object to quickly understand the structure of OpenStack, on the other hand, can also provide reference and basis for the future design of the project. As the cloud platform in use with the enterprise traditional IT environment has a big difference, so pre-sales personnel in the learning process, should be more understanding of the characteristics of OpenStack deployment, service and service relationships between the high reliability of the cloud platform and production environment related issues. Also, be aware of the changes and ways in which users ' business systems migrate to the cloud platform. For example: The network in OpenStack is divided into fixed IP and floating IP, but the user's original business system will only have one IP, this time need to consider how to choose the appropriate deployment plan for the user.
- OpenStack Architecture: Mastering the basic workings of the OpenStack module and the detailed role of the module. This is to help the pre-sales staff in the follow-up communication with users, to help users choose the appropriate modules to solve the needs of users.
- The development trend of OpenStack: This part of the content is to guide the customer's future project needs. For example, in distributed storage, NFV and Sdn.
System engineers and operations personnel
IaaS Cloud Platform is not only the traditional enterprise IT architecture changes, but also from the management of the enterprise's original process has formed a shock. Users who need training tend to focus on their own OpenStack cloud platform.
- Using training, unlike the two simple uses above, OPS requires a deep understanding of the use of the OpenStack Management Section, as well as a command-line approach to the operations involved.
- OpenStack architecture to understand how OpenStack works internally, helping to quickly locate problems and maintain the system. This section contains more content, from the principle of OpenStack itself to virtual machines, storage, and virtual network implementation needs to have a system to understand.
- Deployment training requires a detailed understanding of the installation process, the full profile functionality and common options and parameters.
- Automated deployment training, which is time-consuming and not guaranteed to be accurate, requires at least one method of automating deployment as an operational personnel. There are many options in this area, from Tripleo, fuel to puppet,salt,ansible. Individuals or advocates should choose salt or ansible of a kind to learn and master.
- Operation and maintenance training, the requirement is to quickly locate the problem after a cloud platform problem occurs.
- Automated operations Training, devops as a future operational trend, is repeatedly mentioned. Cloud Platform automation operation of a lot of content, deployment, monitoring, alarm, automatic patrol, health check, etc., the use of the tool is not the above mentioned salt or ansible such tools. Automating operations is not only a major trend of future training for the cloud platform, but also the training content that enterprises need.
Development staff
The developer's need for OpenStack training is primarily about future work (in addition to corporate coercion or interest), from my experience: one is based on OpenStack API development and one is the development of OpenStack. So for two different needs, the training content needs to be designed separately, in general, the latter includes the previous training.
Unlike the previous training, I think deployment training is not necessary for developers, because in practice it is difficult for developers to have real access to the installation process, which is often done by the company's IT staff and involves a large number of Linux-based commands, Many developers are actually not very familiar with this part, so even if they learn the installation content, it is still smattering. Rather than wasting time on installation, learn more about architectural details.
- Use training to help developers quickly understand OpenStack.
- Understanding the development process of the community, the extent to which OpenStack has grown to today, is inextricably linked to the community's code management processes, so this is part of what each developer learns.
- Setting up a research and development environment, since the development of OpenStack should be developed in accordance with the development of the environment, so shielding the details of many installations, and let developers have a fast to use and development of the environment.
- Based on the OpenStack API development, this part should be a focus, I usually set a specific user needs, by solving the user needs to understand the use of the API. For example: As a user, I want to mount and automatically partition my virtual machine to the/MNT directory. The content here contains the use of API documentation, which is detailed in the browser rest client plug-in to learn about the OpenStack API invocation process and learn to use the OpenStack SDK.
- OpenStack Orchestration Services, which implement scenarios in API development with Orchestration Services, can also include scenarios for scaling and auto scaling. This is probably part of what developers are very much in need of in future development.
- With OpenStack in the direction of the future, OpenStack's big tent is a great way to learn about the future of OpenStack.
For developers who develop OpenStack in the future, the following training content should be added according to the actual development content:
- OpenStack General-purpose technology to learn about OpenStack's common technologies helps to understand all of OpenStack's modules, including: Eventlet,rest and Wsgi,taskflow,oslo projects, among many other important class libraries.
- Introduction to the architecture and development of typical modules, the recommended modules include: Nova/neutron/horizon/ceilometer, which almost covers the architecture of most openstack modules, so it is important to understand the architecture and working principles of these modules, is very helpful for understanding the entire OpenStack project. It's really hard to get the code straight, and I'm used to using the scene to track the running of the code and sort out the timing diagram.
Students
The student community is in fact a fairly promising market, and now openstack talent is scarce in the country, so OpenStack must start at the university. The students ' learning about OpenStack cannot be confined to openstack itself, but the relevant content must be studied, but it is not recommended to fully theoretical learning, emphasizing the ability to do the work is the key. For example: Learn from Python, learn virtualization software, install OpenStack, and develop openstack in a progressive manner.
Summarize
I think the important part of the training is to let the students do it, otherwise the training will not be very effective. The above is my superficial understanding of OpenStack training, but also ask you to advise.
User experience with OpenStack training
