1. Open Writing
For Apache CloudStack
Radhika PC
12/1/12

2. Credits
• Apache CloudStack Contributors
• Jessica Tomechak
• Ram Chinta
• Archana Maheshwari
• Deepti Dohare

3. Agenda
•What is Apache CloudStack?
•The Apache Way™
•Apache CloudStack TechPubs

4. •What is Apache CloudStack?
•The Apache Way™
•Apache CloudStack TechPubs

5. CloudStack: Key Highlights
A proven Infrastructure
As a Service (IAAS) Cloud
Platform
Hypervisor Agnostic
Scalable Architecture

6. Apache CloudStack: Architecture
Portal and End User Experience
Amazon eCommerce Platform
AWS API (EC2, S3, …)
Cloud API
Amazon Proprietary CloudStack Software
Apache Orchestration
vSphere XenServer KVM
Open Source Xen Hypervisor
Any Networking Any Servers Any Storage

7. CloudStack: Trodden Path
• Developed since 2008 by Cloud.com
• Citrix acquired Cloud.com in 2011
• Donated to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) in April
2012, where it is now an Incubator project
• First ASFCS 4.0.0-Incubator released in November 2012
• Powering some of the world’s largest clouds today

8. •What is Apache CloudStack?
•The Apache Way™
•Apache CloudStack Techubs

10. Apache Contributor to Committer

11. Process to
Become an
Incubation
Project

12. Process to
Become a Top-
Level Apache
Project

13. The Apache Way
• Pure meritocracy
• Earn the merit
• Peer to peer
• Open communication
• Decision is made by voting
• Low barrier to contribution

14. •What is Apache CloudStack?
•The Apache Way
•Apache CloudStack TechPubs

15. At work..
A Citrix CloudPlatform Writer
If not at work..
An Apache CloudStack Contributor

16. Wearing Two Hats
Traditional Writing Open-Source Writing
Authoring Authoring Contributor Features
Peer Reviews Peer Reviews + Contributor Doc Reviews in Open
Status/Process Updates Non-Voice IRC Chat + Wikis
Meetings Meetings + Meetups+ Mailing List
Learning Learning—Wider Boundary
Defect Fixing Fixing Defects on Contributor Features
Hack Weeks
Fun Time with Social Media

17. Two Sides of the Same Coin..
What drives you..
..Passion is the word
…Visibility
….Opportunities
What deters you..
.. if you are not doing what you really love to do
…if you are thin-skinned
….if you are insecure
….if you are not open

18. Proprietary to Open: Where We Were
• Two Resources and three months !
• Three Proprietary releases and one Open-Source release!
• ~ 500 pages of documentation in Microsoft Word !

19. Unstructured to Modular Source: Non-
Automation
 Modular source
 Converted to DocBook XML—manually !
 Updated old sections
 Copy edited
 Improved doc design and modularity

20. Publishing with Publican
• Easy to set up
• Applies brands to “skin" content
• Uses conditional tags
• Generates a variety of output formats
• Generates .po files for translators

21. Publican: Example Configuration File
Output type
xml_lang: en-US Publican looks for an XML file with this name
type: Book and uses that as the main book file
docname: Installation_Guide
brand: cloudstack The product logo, CSS styles, copyright text,
chunk_first: 1 navigation button images etc. are set in the
chunk_section_depth: 1 brand
condition: install
Chunk settings control when Publican starts a
new HTML output file
Conditional text marked with any other label
will be excluded from the output

22. Mechanics

23. The Apache Documentation Process
• Functional Spec discussions on cloudstack-
dev@incubator.apache.org
• Sign up for a feature
• Documentation Reviews through Apache Review Board—
https://reviews.apache.org/
• Defects are filed at
https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/CLOUDSTACK

24. Apache Review Board
Submit a Patch
Review
Yes
Comments?
No
Ship it!
24

25. Documentation Reviews

26. Demo

27. Join the Community….
• Check us out @
ᵒ cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/CLOUDSTACK/Index
ᵒ http://cloudstack.org
• IRC: #cloudstack on irc.freenode.net
• Forums: http://cloudstack.org/forum/
• Subscribe to Mailing Lists @
cloudstack-dev@incubator.apache.org
cloudstack-users@incubator.apache.org
• Join Apache CloudStack Bangalore Meetup Group
http://www.meetup.com/CloudStack-Bangalore-Group/
• Join Apache CloudStack Facebook Group
@https://www.facebook.com/groups/cloudstack/

28. Q&A