[Users] Automating the manual labour between us admins and our potential customers (orderportal)

[René Koch (ovido)]

Hi Karli,

Thanks a lot for sharing the code of your orderportal! I think this
portal is really useful for providing a easier method to create/order
new virtual machines as the (extended) user portal already does.

I'll try it out and maybe will have some questions.
First question right now: is and if yes how is your software licensed?


Regards,
René



On Thu, 2013-08-08 at 11:42 +0000, Karli Sjöberg wrote:
> Hi everyone!
> 
> Here´s a little something I´ve been tinkering on for some time now;
> the oVirt orderportal!
> 
> I had the idea that if you somehow could get users to order resources
> and give them the ability to, for themselves, take care of their VM´s
> lifecycle without ever having to involve us then that´s what I´d call
> a win-win situation; they get VM´s and we don´t have to lift a finger
> while cashing in on the profits;) While you could just give everyone a
> quota and let them install VM's on their own, those installation would
> most likely lack some of the extra quality that we as experts can
> provide, like to make sure they are domain connected, are
> automatically updated and so on.
> 
> The basic idea is to have, first of all, a domain (in our case it´s MS
> Active Directory) where all of your customers are stored so that they
> are able to just use their regular accounts when ordering and
> administering their resources, and a mail-server that can send the
> confirmations out directly to them. Then it´s our job as admins to fix
> up some templates so that it´s possible to spin up new VM's fast and
> effortlessly enough. Another one of the things that enables this
> solution is to have dynamic DNS activated on the network where these
> VM's are located so that they can just be called something, e.g. based
> on their MAC address, like we do. That way, you are able to anticipate
> what their domain name is going to be. You then register an alias for
> that domain name with the alias name of whatever the customer wanted
> it to be called. Create a domain user that you use to connect all of
> these VM´s to the domain when the template machines start up, so that
> your customers can log in to their VM's with their regular domain
> accounts. And create a role in oVirt that you assign to this manager
> that is only permitted to do what it´s supposed to be doing, and
> nothing else; create VM, take snapshot, assign permissions, etc.
> 
> What´s needed to get up and running with all of this?
> - A LOT!:S Thing is, I´ve done this so that it basically just "works
> for us"™, and not much done about making the code dynamic or flexible
> so you´re going to have to dig in and mod all of the config files so
> that it fits your situation accordingly. But I thought that since the
> basic grunt work is done, I might as well share it so that if anyone
> else gets the same idea, they won´t have to invent the entire wheel
> all over again, they´ll just have to make my wheel fit into their
> car:)
> 
> Anyone who decides they´d like a shot at this, I´ll be more than happy
> helping with any questions you might have.
> 
> Big thanks to you developers, who gave me directions about how to use
> the PythonSDK! I´d also like to give my warmest thanks to the guys at
> paperboardinc, especially Ning, who helped fixing up the
> authentication popup. Having an orderportal without an authentication
> would have been waaay to naive for anyone to stomach:)
> 
> Screenshots are attached.
> 
> -- 
> 
> Med Vänliga Hälsningar
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Karli Sjöberg
> Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
> Box 7079 (Visiting Address Kronåsvägen 8)
> S-750 07 Uppsala, Sweden
> Phone:  +46-(0)18-67 15 66
> karli.sjoberg at slu.se 
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