[et-mgmt-tools] RFC: virt-manager: Manager UI rework

[Dennis J.]

On 07/24/2009 12:22 AM, Cole Robinson wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I've been reworking the main manager view in virt-manager. You can check
> out a screenshot here:
>
> http://fedorapeople.org/~crobinso/virt-manager/vmm-manager-1-overview.png
>
> The code can be cloned from here:
>
> http://fedorapeople.org/~crobinso/virt-manager/virt-manager.manager_ui
>
> I've changed the following pieces:
>
> - Lower button bar is now a toolbar at the top of the window. I think
> this is obvious: a toolbar at the top is much more in line with existing
> UI convention, and is more intuitive.
>
> - Dropped the 'View: Active/Inactive' combo box. I don't think anybody
> was using this option, and it was only taking up space.
>
> - Dropped all columns except Name, Status, and Stats. Columns like vcpus
> and memory progress bar really added no value. Most of these columns
> were for stats reporting which, while useful, would largely balloon the
> list (if enabled) to the point of uselessness. If we want good stats
> comparison, we should have an entire separate screen for this, which
> could provide many more comparison metrics.
>
> - Allow changing what the single graph column is measuring: cpu, disk,
> or network. This way users can still have an at a glance comparison of
> the metric of their choice. Screenshot:
>
> http://fedorapeople.org/~crobinso/virt-manager/vmm-manager-1-graphs.png

I don't find it very useful that the VMs are divided according to the VM 
driver they use. From my perspective I have machines X, Y and Z and most of 
the time I don't really care if they are Xen, KVM, Qemu, etc. VMs.
If I have 10 Webservers of which 5 run on Xen and 5 on KVM then I would 
still like to see them as a group of 10 Webservers rather than being split 
into two groups according to the driver.

In fact I think the grouping should be defined by the user e.g. 
"Webservers-extranet", "Webservers-intranet", "Databases", etc.

regards,
   Dennis