[ovirt-users] User story

Sat May 13 19:11:36 UTC 2017

Hi,

First of all, thanks for sharing. It's always good to get feedback,
especially when it's balanced and with specific examples and comparisons.

Secondly, I do believe you have touched on what I believe is a conceptual
difference oVirt has, which translates to a gap in the experience you have
described: when managing 2-3 hosts, it is more intuitive and easier to just
configure each separately (and there's very little to configure anyway, and
the number of hosts is low), then to configure on a higher level (in oVirt
case, data center and cluster level) and apply - who needs either when you
have 2-3 hosts, right?

In a sense, the hyper-converged (gdeploy - see
http://www.ovirt.org/blog/2017/04/up-and-running-with-ovirt-4-1-and-gluster-storage/
) provides a good 'day 1' experience I believe - but is indeed limited to
the hyper-converged deployment type. It'd be a good idea to expand it to
the general case of 2-3 hosts, I reckon.

Perhaps we need to go further and somehow hide both data center and cluster
(for X hosts, where X is lower than... 5?) assuming you'd have only a
single DC and a single cluster - and present their options as 'global'?
Once you go above 5 hosts we'll expand the options and display the bigger
hierarchy?

We've had the idea of 'ovirt-lite' years ago, and it never really
materialized - perhaps we should revisit it. I think it's easy
technologically, a bit more challenging to get right the improved user
experience. I can certainly see the use cases of both small labs, remote
offices and proof-of-concept setups.

As for the installation, I would really like to see:
1. Install an OS -or- install oVirt node
2. Go to http://<URL>
3. Installation wizard.

This is exactly (again) what gdeploy provides, as well as hosted-engine -
but we probably need to streamline further more and add regular engine
setup to it.

Thanks again,
Y.

On Sat, May 13, 2017 at 9:04 PM, Johannes Spanier <jospanier at web.de> wrote:

> Hi oVirt community.
>
> I did a short series for tweets @jospanier judging my first time user
> experience with several virtualization platforms and was asked by Sandro
> Bonazzola to elaborate a bit further than what fits into 140 chars.
>
> I had a specific use case: The small-ish learning lab with only 2-3 nodes
> and it needs to be free. I also wanted live migration to stay flexible with
> my hosts.
>
> I currently use my lab for to run ~10 virtual CSR1000V routers on free
> ESXi in addition to some real router hardware. I want to expand the lab to
> be able to explore some other technologies as well like network automation,
> SDN, infrastructure as code and the likes.
>
> The lineup for the PoC was oVirt, ESXi, Openstack and Proxmox VE.
>
> I my tweets I was referring to a) the install procedure and b) the
> operational experience.
>
> Here is what I found. These findings are highly subjective and debatable.
> I am aware of that.
>
> Both ESXi and Proxmox VE is trivial to install. You grab the ISO image,
> use a tool like Rufus to make an bootable USB stick or use iLO virtual CD
> functionality and off you go. Both installers do not ask many questions and
> just do their job. After installation ESXi is all ready to run. Just open
> the WebGui and start deploying your first node. With Proxmox VE you get a
> TUI wizard guiding you though the last steps. After that the WebGui is
> ready and you can deploy your first VM immediately.
>
> I found oVirt a bit more involved to install. You have to install the
> Engine on one node and then register the other hosts with it. While that
> process is easy to handle it is a bit more work. A big thing for me was
> that at first glance there did no seem to be a "single node" install. My
> fist impression was that I needed a minimum of two servers. Of course later
> I learned about the Hosted Engine and the All-In-One install.
>
> Do not get me wrong. First time oVirt installation is still easy to handle
> on a quiet afternoon.
>
> Openstack installation compared to that is a PITA nightmare. I tried both
> RDO (TripleO) and Fuel for setup but gave up after two days for both,
> confused about what I actually need to do for a start. Got some nodes
> running with Fuel but was not satisfied. I then followed the Openstack
> manual Install Guide. I have a day job, so it took me about 5 days to get
> through the whole procedure, but a least I understood what was going on and
> what I needed to do.
>
> So that was my "first day" experience with those.
> Now for the "second day" i.e. operation.
>
> ESXi and Proxmox VE are both very simple to understand. You usually do not
> need a manual to find you way around. Deploying a VM is a breeze. oVirt is
> pretty simple to understand too. But you have to wrap your head around the
> Data Center principle underpinning everything. Its just a bit more
> complicated. On one or two occasions while playing around it was unclear at
> first why my datacenter was offline and I had to consult the manual for
> that. One can immediately feel that multi-tenancy is a big benefit of oVirt
> that is not so obvious in ESXi and Proxmox. But it comes with the price of
> added complexity.
>
> The new WebGui in the ESXi 6.5 I used is sloooow but some functions are
> not available with the vSphere Client Tool any more.
> Proxmox and oVirt WebGui are very responsive and "feel" way better. The
> Openstack WebGui is also quite nice.
>
> If you want to build a private multi-teneant scale-out cloud OpenStack is
> probably your best horse in the stable. But for my purpose it was just
> overkill. The process of deploying a simple VM was the most work from all
> four tools.
>
> Wrap-up
> For the specific use-case (see above) Proxmox VE was the best fit for me,
> closely followed by oVirt due to the more involved installation. ESXi comes
> in lagging in third place as it does not offer live migration in the free
> version and due to the poor WebGui experience I got. Also you have to pay
> big bucks to get the same functionality as in the other three. Openstack is
> placed at a distant fourth place for this use case.
>
> Hope that was interesting. Do reach out to me on twitter if you have any
> further questions or suggestions.
>
> Regards
> Johannes
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