no separation of instance id from node id

[Scott Moser]

Please forgive the ignorance in opening this bug. I've not taken enough time to research.

I'm given the impression that there is no separation in MaaS between an "instance" and a "node". I'll define these in case my noomenclature is wrong, so you can hopefully figure out what I mean.
 * node: a physical system that used for one deployment, and then re-provisioned for another.
 * Instance: a specific deployment of a node

As I understand it, essentially node == instance.
But if there is no specific entity representing instance, I think it makes some things much more difficult or impossible.

As an example:
 * How many times has node 0x3339 been deployed?
 * Do large machines get used for longer times than small machines?
 * How many total hours has user Bob used?
 * what percentage of the time are our nodes being utilized?

Maybe some of those things can be obtained more difficultly using the current system (as I understand it).

It just seems to me that node and instance are two separate things, and it would be better to model them as such.

Related bugs:
 * bug 1507586: previous owner of node can use oauth creds to retrieve current owner's user-data

[Julian Edwards (julian-edwards)]

Thanks for the bug Scott. These are all valid comments, but nothing is in scope for the initial release so I'm marking this "low" for now. We can re-visit post-12.04.

[Scott Moser (smoser)]

Currently, maas has no separation between 'instance' and 'node'. There is no unique information per "instance".

Thus, if I:
  a.) deploy a node
  b.) read oauth credentials from that node
  c.) return that node

I can read the user-data that the new owner provided . user-data might possibly containing sensitive information.

A secondary fallout of this if a node boots into an old installation maas thinks it was deployed and marks it DEPLOYED.

[Blake Rouse (blake-rouse)]

This can be fixed without the seperation of instance-id and node-id. We just need to clear the oauth token between each deployment.

[Blake Rouse (blake-rouse)]

I think what you are describing is a different bug then what is document in this bug. If this is really what this bug is about then please update the description and title, because it does not match the issue you just commented about.

[Mike Pontillo (mpontillo)]

This looks like a feature request. Marking 'wishlist'.

[Scott Moser (smoser)]

filed https://bugs.launchpad.net/maas/+bug/1507586

[Adam Collard (adam-collard)]

This bug has not seen any activity in the last 6 months, so it is being automatically closed.

If you are still experiencing this issue, please feel free to re-open.

MAAS Team