[ovirt-devel] Gluster Volume Snapshots - Feature review

[Einav Cohen]

Hi Shubhendu,

First of all - very detailed wiki pages (I focused mainly on the 
User Experience part) - nicely done. 

I have a couple of comments / suggestions regarding the GUI:

Snapshot action-group: 

- from the wiki page: 
"""
A new action-group "Snapshot" would be introduced under actions 
for a volume. 
"""
I assume that you will implement it similarly to the "Power Management" 
action-group (on Hosts main tab) or the "Profiling" action-group (on 
the Volumes tab), i.e. with a drop-down-like styling 
[http://i.imgur.com/eWRg6o8.png]?

- If the Snapshot-related actions are expected to be core/critical in 
the Volumes-related workflows, it makes sense to put them in the main-
tab, but please consider adding them to the Snapshots sub-tab as well, 
in order to be consistent with other similar oVirt workflows. 

New Snapshot dialog -> Schedule section: 

- I suggest to implement the time-interval selection with a drop-down, 
rather than a radio-button group; it is more consistent with e.g. 
event-repeat scheduling in a calendar [http://i.imgur.com/y9Gn3wq.png], 
it will save real-estate within the dialog and it will be more easily 
readable for the user. 

- to my understanding, the New Snapshot functionality doesn't have to 
be recurrent; however, there isn't any way to "disable" the recurring 
aspect. Here are some suggestions to how this should be added: 
http://i.imgur.com/4j7hvRY.png
Option 3 is my personal favorite - it is the simplest, and is consistent 
with Calendear-scheduling UI. Option 1 is my least favorite, however it 
is consistent with e.g. the "Enable Power Management" UI within the "New 
Host" dialog. 

Snapshots -> Options: 

- I think that there are a couple of problematic issues with this dialog: 

  * the different functionality of this dialog when a Volume is selected 
vs. when no Volume is selected may be unclear to the user. 
  
  * the fact that we can update Cluster-related parameters (which 
potentially affects *all* volumes in that Cluster) within a specific 
Volume-context dialog is a bit risky - and we don't have anything similar 
to that anywhere in the application today IIRC. 

my recommendations:

  * have separate "Options - Cluster" and "Options - Volume" actions;
"Options - Cluster" should always be enabled. 
"Options - Volume" should be enabled only when a Volume is selected. 

  * See http://i.imgur.com/pfRpjrH.png for my suggestion for "Cluster 
Options" vs. "Volume Options". Note that from the "Volume Options" 
dialog, you may allow editing the Cluster Options by clicking on the 
link-button, which will either (a) open the "Cluster Options" dialog 
on top or (b) allow editing the Cluster Values inline within the 
already-open dialog - this should be accompanied with a clear note to 
the user that he is editing Cluster-related parameters from the current 
(Volume) context, which may affect *all* Volumes in that Cluster. 
Also note that in my suggestion, the user can conveniently see both the 
Volume values and the Cluster Values side-by-side at once, for reference. 

Snapshots -> Schedule: 

- to my understanding, this should be very similar (or identical) to the 
New Snapshot functionality? if so, we may want to simply open the "New 
Snapshot" dialog focused on the "Schedule" side-section (rather than the 
'General' side-section, maybe already pre-populated with some values in 
the 'General' side-section (which will still be editable by the user) and 
something already pre-selected in the (focused) "Schedule" section. 

please let me know whether you think these can/should be incorporated 
into the design, and/or if you have any comments or questions. 

thanks. 

----
Regards,
Einav

----- Original Message -----
> From: "Shubhendu Tripathi" <shtripat at redhat.com>
> To: devel at linode01.ovirt.org, jhernand at redhat.com, "Michael Pasternak" <mpastern at redhat.com>
> Sent: Monday, November 10, 2014 1:52:40 AM
> Subject: [ovirt-devel] Gluster Volume Snapshots - Feature review
> 
> Hi All,
> 
> Please help us to review the design of Gluster Volume Snapshots in oVirt,
> 
> Here are two design on wiki page
> 
> General Feature Design
> http://www.ovirt.org/Features/GlusterVolumeSnapshots
> 
> Detailed Design
> http://www.ovirt.org/Features/Design/GlusterVolumeSnapshots
> 
> We target it in ovirt 3.6 release.
> 
> Marked Juan/Michael specifically for REST review.
> 
> Best Regards,
> Shubhendu Tripathi
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