Introducing Rubick, a Diagnostic Tool for OpenStack Clouds

Over the last few weeks, we at Mirantis Labs have finally gotten a good handle on this idea we'd been kicking around for probably too long. Enter Rubick–a tool for cloud operators designed to diagnose OpenStack-based clouds.

Our goal is to provide a simple and convenient tool (or tools) an OpenStack cloud operator can use to inspect and validate their cloud configuration consistency and correctness. A cloud configuration includes configuration file parameters, OpenStack process runtime parameters, and the network and storage configurations of physical nodes, among other specifications. All of the data combined makes up an architecture data model, a complex object that represents the OpenStack architecture.

Rubick will take the architecture model and match it to a set of rules. Some of those rules are simple and only check the configuration parameter syntax. Other rules are more complex and inspect the entire model to find semantic inconsistencies across multiple OpenStack components. Based on the match, Rubick intends to diagnose and report all of the configuration errors and glitches and provide suggestions on how to fix each particular misconfiguration--all of this wrapped in a smooth and friendly UI.

We shot a short video that shows the basic workflow and gives some reasoning behind the project:

The Rubick source code is available in GitHub, along with some documentation. You can track the project development on Launchpad.

We want this solution to be highly useful to a wide audience of OpenStack end users, and we eagerly anticipate your feedback. What are your thoughts on this idea? What features would you want to see in this kind of tool? Contact us now on rubick at mirantis.com!