[Engine-devel] UX: Display VM Downtime in the UI

[Adam Litke]

Hi UX developers,

My recent change: http://gerrit.ovirt.org/#/c/22429/ adds support for
tracking the time a VM was last stopped and presenting it in the REST
API.  I would also like to expose this information in the admin
portal.  This feature has been requested by end users and is useful
for managing lots of VMs which may not be used frequently.

My idea is to change the 'Uptime' column in the VMs tab to 'Uptime /
Downtime' or some equivalent and more compact phrasing.  If the VM is
Up, then last_start_time would be used to calculate uptime.  If the VM
is Down, then last_stop_time would be used to calculate downtime.
This helps to make efficient use of the column space.

I am not sure how column sorting is being implemented, but if we
combine uptime and downtime into a single column we have an
opportunity to provide a really intuitive sort where the longest
uptime machines are at the top and the longest downtime machines are
at the bottom.  This could be accomplished by treating uptime as a
positive interval and downtime as a negative interval.

Questions for you all:

- Do you support the idea of changing the Uptime column to include
  Downtime as well or would you prefer a new column instead?

- Is there a better heading for the new column or is 'Uptime /
  Downtime' good enough?

- How should we handle sorting?

Thanks for your input!