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

[Adam Litke]

On 19/12/13 03:08 -0500, Omer Frenkel wrote:
>
>
>----- Original Message -----
>> From: "Adam Litke" <alitke at redhat.com>
>> To: "Malini Rao" <mrao at redhat.com>
>> Cc: engine-devel at ovirt.org
>> Sent: Wednesday, December 18, 2013 11:19:17 PM
>> Subject: Re: [Engine-devel] UX: Display VM Downtime in the UI
>>
>> On 18/12/13 16:04 -0500, Malini Rao wrote:
>> >
>> >----- Original Message -----
>> >> From: "Adam Litke" <alitke at redhat.com>
>> >> To: engine-devel at ovirt.org
>> >> Sent: Wednesday, December 18, 2013 9:42:59 AM
>> >> Subject: [Engine-devel] UX: Display VM Downtime in the UI
>> >>
>> >> 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.
>> >
>>
>> Thanks for your comments!
>>
>> >MR: I like the idea in general but can we extend to other states as
>> >well? Then we could have the col be called something like 'Time in
>>
>> I would argue that 'Up' and 'Down' are the only persistent states
>> where a VM can linger for a user-controlled amount of time.  The
>> others (WaitForLaunch, PoweringDown, etc) are just transitions with
>> their own system defined timeouts.  Because of this, it really only
>> makes sense to denote uptime and downtime.  When the VM is in another
>> state, this column would be empty.
>>
>
>when do you think this would be empty?
>the way i see it, if there is a qemu process running, we count 'up time' (as it is today)
>otherwise, its down time (when vm is suspended/image locked its down as well)
>maybe only in 'unknown' state, when we dont have connection to the host,
>and we dont know the state of the vm it can be empty.

Sure, makes sense and I agree.

>> >current state'. Also, I think since this col is so far from the first
>> >column that has the status icon, we should have a tooltip on the
>> >value that says ' Uptime' , 'down time' or '<Status> time'.
>>
>> Agree on the tooltip.
>>
>> >>
>> >> 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.
>> >
>> >MR: That's an interesting idea. Not sure how that would translate if
>> >we did all states and times. Then I would think you would do
>> >descending order within each state but then we would have to fix a
>> >sequence for the display of the various statuses based on the
>> >statuses that matter most.
>>
>> This is much simpler if you just work with Up and Down.
>>
>> >>
>> >> 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?
>> >
>> >
>> >MR: I do not like the idea of introducing new columns for this
>> >purpose since at any given time, only one of the columns will be
>> >populated. Another idea is to remove this column all together and
>> >include the time for the current status as a tooltip on the status
>> >icon preceding the name.
>>
>> What about adding the uptime/downtime to the status column itself?  I
>> don't necessarily think this will muddy the status much since there is
>> still an icon on the left.
>>
>
>i like better the first option of one column with up/down time,
>i think its more clear to the user

Can you suggest a good concise column heading for it?