[ovirt-devel] Subject: Looking for advice regarding user portal development.

[Greg Sheremeta]

Hi Thomas,

I wanted to add my thoughts to your interesting work! I'm a teacher at
heart, so your project is captivating :)

* Much of the "template" functionality you're describing is in
Vagrant. Please check it out if you haven't already.
[https://www.vagrantup.com/] That said, I'm not sure how much
integration we have between vagrant and ovirt.
[https://github.com/pradels/vagrant-ovirt] hasn't been touched since
2014. Hmm, something to look into.
* I, too, would be very weary of trying to extend the current User
Portal. We've had some success making some smaller REST-based portals.
Check out this one: [https://github.com/jennykang/oVirtDash]
* There are several of us who can be resources for you, whichever way
you decide. I'll send you a private email with some contacts.
* Not sure if you have a working server/setup yet, but we can help
with that too. I typically mentor people on this -- just email me and
I can make time to walk you through anything you need (via videochat,
too, if that's easier).

Best wishes,
Greg

On Mon, Jan 11, 2016 at 12:52 PM, Thomas Shaw
<t.shaw7575 at student.leedsbeckett.ac.uk> wrote:
> Good Afternoon,
>
> First of all I want to thank you all for the detailed replies - I really
> appreciate it.
>
> I feel that I would much prefer to take the more difficult path and
> contribute code to the project rather than build something from scratch.
> After reviewing the responses with my tutor we feel that the functional
> additions that we require are generic enough and would likely be useful for
> other users. The existing userportal is close enough to what we need and has
> the benefit of being used and tested. As well as helping avoid the
> maintenance issues mentioned.
>
> Below I'll provide a breakdown of the functionality we need, justification
> for why we need it, and a proposed solution.
>
> 1) The ability to quickly create a new VM from a template, whilst hiding
> some of the complexity from the user.
>
> The current flow for creating a VM from template is to hit the extended tab,
> click create new VM, select the template and then fill in the name. I want
> to give the user a context menu when right clicking the desired template to
> 'quick launch', which will programmatically follow this process using the
> default options and fill in the Name field based on a format specified in a
> configuration file or options menu. By default I think something like
> "Username TemplateName Index", where index refers to the number of VMs
> created from that template by a specific user, would work well. e.g. "TShaw
> Fedora22 01".
>
> Benefits: Saves time, hides the complexity of some of the virtualisation
> concepts which end-users (particularly students) may find disconcerting,
> provides uniformity in VM names for all students.
>
> 2) The ability to provide some of the more advanced features whilst hiding
> some of the complexities of the Extended view
>
> The extended pane of the user portal provides the user with a lot of
> information, this is great for enterprise purposes but, again, may be a
> little distracting for students.
>
> Proposed Solution A: Create a third tab, something like a 'Quick start /
> Launcher' page, which sits between the basic and extended views displaying a
> list of the user's current VMs and a list of available templates (which
> following the completion of issue 1 will be easily creatable).
>
> Proposed Solution B: Similar to the above but rather than introduce a third
> tab, the list of templates would be displayed on the right hand side of the
> basic page. Either tabbed with the currently selected VM info pane or as
> another            column.
>
> Proposed Solution C: Add settings that will allow the user to enable/disable
> GUI elements in the userportal as required.
>
> Benefits: Too much distracting information for students. Lessens the amount
> of input it takes a user to clone a template. Enables the user to create VMs
> based on templates from one page with a simple right click option and then
> launch.
>
> 3) Ability to specify sets of VM templates which can be created as new VMs
> together
>
> Proposed Solution: Introduce the concept of sets of templates. This will
> provide a tutor the ability to group templates together (through the admin
> portal).
> New submenu @ admin panel which sits below Templates called Sets, can create
> a new group, gives list of templates with checkbox. Requires set name + list
> of templates in the group.
>
> Benefits: Will enable the user to create a full set of templates as a
> context menu option. This will again utilise the feature added in issue 1
> and default all of the VM names in the creation process. Enables tutors to
> set up all VMs required for a particular teaching scenario and have the
> student clone them all without having to find all individual templates, this
> is especially useful in teaching security as a lot of core topics require a
> networked environment of multiple different VMs running different OS’s.
>
>
> The university have some additional feature suggestions which will be
> proposed at a later date (regarding snapshot management by users).
>
> I'm confident that I have the ability and support around me to implement
> these features to a high enough standard to be accepted. Features 1 and 2
> are of the highest priority right now and will be what I focus my efforts on
> until they are completed to a high standard.
>
> If anything above is unclear please let me know and I will expand upon it.
> All feedback and suggestions are greatly appreciated.
>
> Kind regards,
> Thomas Shaw
>
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-- 
Greg Sheremeta, MBA
Red Hat, Inc.
Sr. Software Engineer
gshereme at redhat.com