Apache Warble Proposal
Abstract
Apache Warble is a distributed endpoint monitoring solution where the agent
is hosted on your own hardware. The aim of Warble is to produce a more balanced
and less binary view of services and systems, lowering the rates of false positives
while also providing greater insight into possible peering issues and proactive trend
analysis.
Proposal
The goal of Warble will be to bring internal control of distributed
monitoring back to the end user. Warble can be used as an independent
service running on your own infrastructure monitoring other services
in your infrastructure.
Background and Rationale
The beginning of this project was prompted by the service pingmybox.com
(PMB) going end of life. This brought up conversation about FOSS services
that can monitor internal and external services. PMB offered a unique code
base to build this service upon a known infrastructure.
Initial Goals
Bring PMB code into the ASF, refactor the client/server into
a more reusable structure.
Further reuse of code gives us the a great starting point to build a
starting point.
Current Status
The software exists as a proprietary service. We wish to convert this to
a FLOSS solution.
Meritocracy
The initial PMC list covers new folks coming into the ASF.
Community
There exists a large user-base of software like Warble, as well as existing users of the old propietary service. It is our hope that we
can convert a great deal of these to contributors and testers for the
new open source product.
Core Developers
The initial set of developers are a lot of newcomers:
- Daniel Gruno <humbedooh@apache.org>
- Chris Thistlethwaite <christ@apache.org>
- Haig Didizian <haig@didizian.com>
- Andrew Karetas <Ajkaretas@gmail.com>
- Chandler Claxton <claxtonchandler@gmail.com>
- Luke Stevens <snevets.ekul@gmail.com>
- Mike Andescavage <michael.andescavage@live.com>
- Chris Lambertus <cml@apache.org>
Known Risks
There are many existing services that provide external monitoring. They
are well established and have large user bases.
Orphaned Products
The initial PMC has great interest in open source projects, though no formal
projects have been run.
Inexperience with Open Source
Most of the initial PPMC members are new to the ASF and some are new to open source projects. However,
all are very interested in giving back to the community and projects. Having said that, there are
several people involved with extensive experience in the Apache Way and our procedures and processes.
Homogenous Developers
The initial set of developers are employed by a variety of companies,
located across the world, and used to working on a variety of
distributed projects.
Reliance on Salaried Developers
We do not expect the interest of the proposed initial PMC to be directly
tied to current employment, but will actively seek to grow our volunteer
base regardless.
Relationships with Other Apache Products
Not much to say here. Many ASF projects make use of the proprietary
offering, we wish to open source it and have people engage in the
development of the project. There are, at present, indirect relationships
in that some dependencies are built on Apache software, but these are
generally by proxy and does not merit considering Warble as a sub-project
of an existing TLP.
Initial Source
The initial task of the PMC will be assessing what we wish the project to
contain. The proprietary vendor is willing to donate the software, but
considerable rewriting and relicensing will have to take place. This will
likely happen in stages, with the scrapers and UI being ported first,
and a backend auth system being partly ported/donated, and partly
developed from scratch at the ASF.
Source and Intellectual Property Submission Plan
All the existing code in question (from the PMB suite) is owned by
Quenda IvS, and will be donated to the ASF.
External Dependencies
The current code base depends on incompatible licenses for
visualizations. We will work towards 100% compatibility with the Apache
License v/2.
Cryptography
Warble will make use of some SSL/TLS and cryptography in order to transmit data
between nodes and main server, however we will not be incorporating any cryptography
in the project code itself, but rather rely on existing encryption libraries and protocols.
Required Resources
Mailing Lists
private@warble.apache.org (moderated subscriptions)
commits@warble.apache.org
issues@warble.apache.org
dev@warble.apache.org
users@warble.apache.org
Repositories
Issue Tracking
We will be starting with just GitHub Issues/PRs and later assess the possible need for something else.
Other Resources
We have no other requirements at present.
We will require one or more VMs at some point, however, it may be the case
that we can get these donated by companies interested in furthering the development
of the project.
domain name:
Initial PMC
- Daniel Gruno <humbedooh@apache.org>
- Chris Thistlethwaite <christ@apache.org>
- Haig Didizian <haig@didizian.com>
- Andrew Karetas <Ajkaretas@gmail.com>
- Chandler Claxton <claxtonchandler@gmail.com>
- Luke Stevens <snevets.ekul@gmail.com>
- Mike Andescavage <michael.andescavage@live.com>
Affiliations
PMC members are employees of ASF, Microsoft, Evolve Guest Solutions, Revolt
Consulting, and independently employed
Sponsors
Champion
Daniel Gruno <humbedooh@apache.org>
Nominated Mentors
Daniel Pono Takamori <pono@apache.org>