Fwd: Make JaaS better for data scientists

[Merlijn Sebrechts]

Hi all


Juju as a Service is incredibly cool. This is a great step towards making
Juju useful for data scientists. However, there are still a number of
issues that block this adoption. This email sheds some light into how, in
our experience, a data scientist should use Juju and identifies what issues
prevent data scientists from using Juju this way.


The ideal workflow of a data scientist

1. Search the Charm store for the framework you want to use.
2. Find the right bundle such as the Apache Spark Zeppelin bundle
<https://jujucharms.com/apache-hadoop-spark-zeppelin> and click on "add to
new model"
3. login into JaaS, click deploy and add cloud credentials.
4. Wait until the bundle is deployed completely
5. Use the GUI to go to the Zeppelin UI
6. Do data science magic.

Blockers in this workflow


   - A bunch of Charms fail when deployed from the GUI. *Juju GUI handling
   of empty config breaks promulgated charms. [1]
   <https://github.com/juju/juju-gui/issues/2486> [2]
   <https://bugs.launchpad.net/juju/+bug/1513466> [3]
   <https://bugs.launchpad.net/cassandra-charm/+bug/1645821>*
   - It's not possible use the GUI to go to the Zeppelin UI because
   Zeppelin is a subordinate. *Subordinate unit details show principal unit
   details <https://github.com/juju/juju-gui/issues/2309>*
   - A bunch of Big Data Charms cannot be deployed from the Charm Store
   because it's not possible to upload large resources. [1]
   <https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/charm/+bug/1592822> [2]
   <https://github.com/CanonicalLtd/jujucharms.com/issues/332>
   - It's not possible to create some models with the GUI because the GUI
   doesn't understand regular relationships to a subordinate charm
   <https://github.com/juju/juju-gui/issues/2485>

Non-blocking issues:

   - The data scientist has no idea what version of the platform he is
   running since workload version isn't show in the GUI
   <https://github.com/juju/juju-gui/issues/2600>.

Enhancements:


   - Bring a GUI's application address more to the front. A user now has to
   dig into the units to see this info. This info should be front and center
   since it's the obvious next step after the model is deployed.
   - Bring advanced Charm states more to the front. Currently, a user has
   to dig into the units in the sidebar to find a very badly wrapped version
   of the unit message.
   - Putting the public IP first in the list of IP's.
   https://github.com/juju/juju-gui/issues/2598
   <https://github.com/juju/juju-gui/issues/2598>
   - In general, show much more info in the GUI, such as machine IP's etc.

Next steps

If the data scientists likes what he sees, he'll have a few questions.

1. How do I get ssh access to the machines themselves?
2. How do I connect my own applications to this model?

>From our experience, many data scientists want a web UI to do that stuff.
Installing an Ubuntu system + Juju and all its tools and configuring the
tools to connect to the model is a lot of work. This is where Data
Scientists drop out, they don't want to invest so much time just to connect
to their cluster. This is the exact reason why I built the Eclipse Che Charm
<https://jujucharms.com/eclipse-che>. An in-browser IDE + Console +
Charmbox.

Blockers for next steps


   - The GUI borks on the Eclipse Che Charm because it tries to parse the
   >30.000 open ports that Eclipse Che has.
   <https://github.com/juju/juju-gui/issues/2596> The CLI shows this
   correctly as a port range but the GUI doesn't. So we need the CLI to find
   the url to go to eclipse che but we need access to eclipse che to get a
   cli. Chicken or egg?

Non-blocking issues:



   - There is no way to export model info from the GUI and import it into
   the CLI. <https://github.com/juju/juju-gui/issues/2596> Another approach
   to this might be to piggyback on the idea of exposing the controller as an
   application in the "controller" model. The eclipse-che charm can then
   connect to the controller charm to import that information.



Kind regards
Merlijn
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