The infrastructure for the OpenStack project itself is run with the same processes, tools and philosophy as any other OpenStack project. The infrastructure team is an open meritocracy that welcomes new members. You can read about the OpenStack way on the wiki:
The project infrastructure encompasses all of the systems that are used in the day to day operation of the OpenStack project as a whole. This includes development, testing, and collaboration tools. All of the software that we run is open source, and its configuration is public. The project still uses a number of systems that do not yet fall under this umbrella (notably, the main website), but we’re working to incorporate them so that people may just as easily contribute to those areas. All new services used by the project should begin as part of the infrastructure project to ensure easy collaboration from the start.
We welcome contributions from new contributors. Reading this documentation is the first step. You should also join our mailing list.
We are most active on IRC, so please join the #openstack-infra channel on Freenode.
Feel free to attend our weekly IRC meeting. on Tuesdays at 19:00 UTC in #openstack-meeting.
Check out our open bugs, particularly the low-hanging-fruit, which are smaller (but still important!) tasks that may not require a great deal of in-depth knowledge.
We hold regular bug days where we review and triage bugs.
To read about how our systems are managed and how to view or edit those configurations, see System Administration.
And if you have any questions, please ask.
The infrastructure team is open, meaning anyone may join and begin contributing with no formal process. As an individual’s contributions and involvement grow, there are more formal roles in the team:
Core team members are able to approve or reject proposed changes to any of the infrastructure projects. If an individual shows commitment and aptitude in code reviews, the current core team membership will take notice and propose that person for inclusion in the core team, and hold a vote to make the final determination.
In addition to the project-wide infrastructure group, individual infrastructure projects (such as Jenkins Job Builder or Reviewday) may also have their own core teams as necessary.
While core membership is directly analogous to the same system in other OpenStack projects, because the infrastructure team operates production servers, there is another sub-group of the infrastructure team that has root access to all servers. Root membership is handled in the same way as core membership. Root members must also be core members, but core members may not necessarily be root members.
Root access is generally only necessary to launch new servers, perform low-level maintenance, manage DNS, or fix problems. In general it is not needed for day-to-day system administration and configuration which is done in puppet (where anyone may propose changes). Therefore it is generally reserved for people who are well versed in infrastructure operations and can commit to spending a significant amount of time troubleshooting on servers.
Some individuals may need root access to individual servers; in these cases the core group may grant root access on a limited basis.
The infrastructure project maintains a bug list at:
Both defects and new features are tracked in the bug system. A number of tags are used to indicate relevance to a particular subsystem. There is also a low-hanging-fruit tag associated with bugs that should provide a gentle introduction to working on the infrastructure project without needing too much in-depth knowledge or access.