Test and implementation note for Cert achievement.

Moved from docs repo in response to discussion on
PR docs/#253.

Signed-off-by: Kurt Garloff <[email protected]>

Author: garloff

Standards/scs-0004-w1-achieving-certification.md

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+---
+title: "Implementtaion hints for achieveing SCS-compatible certification"
+type: Supplement
+track: Global
+status: Draft
+supplements:
+  - scs-0004-v1-achieving-certification.md
+---
+
+
+# Getting SCS-compatible certification
+
+## Process overview
+
+The *SCS-compatible* Certification for Operators is a technical certification:
+The Operator needs to fulfill technical requirements, such as providing certain
+APIs and guaranteeing certain platform behavior in order to be certifiable.
+
+These requirements are meant to provide guarantees to their customers, allowing
+them to rely on certain features to be available and on certain system behavior
+that lets their applications run in a reliable way.
+
+The SCS certification process typically consists of a few simple steps:
+
+1. Running the SCS compliance test suite and adjusting the infrastructure until it passes.
+2. Any additional declarations (for non-testable aspects) are written and passed to the SCS certification body.
+3. The operator must be a member ("shaper" or "advisor" level) of the Forum SCS-Standards in the
+   OSB Alliance (a non-profit) and pay the respective membership fees. Alternatively fees can
+   be paid without becoming a member.
+4. The cloud can be listed on the SCS pages as *SCS-compatible* with a compatibility status that is
+   updated on a daily basis. SCS then tests the infrastructure on a daily basis.
+
+The precise rules that govern how certificates are issued or withdrawn are defined in the
+[SCS standard 0004](scs-0004-v1-achieving-certification).
+
+
+## Self-testing and technical adjustments
+
+In order for a cloud service offering to obtain a certificate, it has to
+conform to all standards of the respective scope, which will be tested at
+regular intervals, and the results of these tests will be made available
+publicly.
+
+The best approach to get your cloud into compliance is by installing the
+test suite locally. Have a look at the
+[blog article](https://scs.community/blog/2024/10/14/cert-adapt-example.html).
+
+A description how *SCS-compatible IaaS* compliance can be achieved on environments that use different
+OpenStack implementations is written up in a blog article
+[Cost of making an OpenStack Cluster SCS compliant](https://scs.community/2024/05/13/cost-of-making-an-openstack-cluster-scs-compliant/).
+
+## Declarations
+
+For the SCS-compatible IaaS v5 standard, the providers must — if they implement availability zones
+at all (which is optional) — guarantee certain levels of independence for these. This can not
+be fully tested by an automated test. The process thus envisions that providers must create some
+documentation on the physical infrastructure and how it maps to availability zones and declare that
+this documentation reflects the truth. SCS will review the docs and judge whether they meet the
+criteria. In case of doubt, audits can be performed.
+
+## Forum SCS-Standards @ OSBA
+
+The SCS brand belongs to the Open Source Business Alliance e.V. (OSBA), an non-profit organization and
+association for the Open Source Industry in Germany. After the completion of the funded SCS project
+in the OSBA on 2024-12-31, the OSBA sets up the Forum SCS-Standards
+which performs the work to evolve the SCS standards, develops the tests and perform the certification
+process and thus becomes the SCS certification body.
+
+Members of the OSBA can become also member of the Forum SCS-Standards for an additional membership
+fee, providing the financial resources for the Forum SCS-Standards to do its work. Membership in the
+OSBA is open to any organization that supports the goals of the OSBA.
+Alternatively, a certification fee can be paid without any membership.
+
+## Getting listed and tested
+
+When all tests are passing, all needed declarations are done, fees for the certification or the
+membership in the Forum SCS-Standards at the OSBA have been paid, the infrastructure service
+can become officially certified.
+
+The SCS team will add the cloud to the [list of certified clouds](https://docs.scs.community/standards/certification/overview)
+on the SCS docs page. This can be used to prove to customers that the cloud is SCS compliant.
+Note that for public clouds, there will be a nightly job that tests the cloud for compliance, which will be
+triggered by SCS infrastructure (zuul). For this, access to a tenant on the cloud needs
+to be provided free of charge. (This only requires very low quota, one VM is created for a minute
+in one of the tests.)
+
+For clouds not being accessible from the outside, a VPN tunnel or a local monitoring
+job (with result upload) can be used.
+
+Please let us know if you want us to create an official SCS-certified badge that
+can be used in your marketing material beyond pointing to our list.
+
+### Optional Health Monitor
+
+Note that for almost all certified clouds in the list of certified clouds, we also
+have a health monitor running (currently still
+[openstack-health-monitor](https://docs.scs.community/docs/operating-scs/guides/openstack-health-monitor/Debian12-Install)
+but soon the new [health-monitor](https://scs.community/tech/2024/09/06/vp12-scs-health-monitor-tech-preview/)),
+which exposes information on the performance and error rate of each cloud.
+This provides some transparency on the state of the clouds by constantly running
+scenario tests against them and is tremendously helpful for both the cloud operations
+teams and their customers. Strictly speaking, it is *not* a requirement for the
+*SCS-compatible* certification, just best practice. It will be part of an
+*SCS-sovereign* certification though, where transparency on operational aspects
+will be required.
+
+## Staying compliant
+
+Once your cloud is listed in the
+[list of certified clouds](https://docs.scs.community/standards/certification/overview)
+which is fed by the
+[compliance manager](https://compliance.sovereignit.cloud/page/table), it
+will enjoy the nightly tests. These might fail for a number of reasons:
+
+* There is a new version of the SCS standards in effect and you need to adjust things.
+* Your cloud was unreachable or otherwise had intermittent issues.
+* You have done changes to your cloud that break *SCS-compatible* compliance.
+* The test automation engine (zuul) is in trouble.
+* The tests have a bug.
+
+In either case, this need proper analysis to determine what should be done.
+<!--In the list of certified clouds, the tests are performed by github actions.
+These are executed from the
+[github SCS standards repository](https://github.com/SovereignCloudStack/standards).
+By looking at the logs from the github actions, you can typically see why the failure
+happened. You could of course also do a local test again to see if the issue can
+be reproduced.-->
+In the compliance manager (executing tests via zuul), we will add links to the log
+files directly on the table, so it will be even easier to find the relevant log files.
+It is a good idea to reproduce the failures by running the test suite locally,
+as it may be easier to focus on just the one failing aspect of your infrastructure.
+
+Your cloud will show up as failing in the compliance manager after tests start
+failing; this is not the same as a revoked certification, though. For clouds that have been
+compliant before, it is highly recommended to work with the SCS certification body
+upon such failures to determine a way back into compliance that avoids certification
+revocation.