RFC: virt-manager: Redesigned 'New VM' wizard
 

Hi all,

The current 'New VM' wizard has clearly started to show its age. The
original design was largely based on xen specific assumptions and the
state of libvirt/virtinst at the time: many of those assumptions don't
apply today, or require a bit more thought since we now support both xen
and qemu based VMs.

You can find a patch for a new implementation of the 'New VM' wizard here:

http://fedorapeople.org/~crobinso/virt-manager/newvm2/virt-manager-newvm-01.patch

I hope you'll agree it's a much simpler and usable layout, without
sacrificing functionality (even laying the groundwork for future
improvements). This design was largely done by Tim Allen (former Red
Hatter) and Jeremy Perry (current Red Hatter), so a big thank you to them.

One of the biggest changes from the old design is that we don't ask
upfront about paravirt vs. fullvirt, VM architecture, or qemu vs. kvm
vs. xenner. For new users, this has been an endless pain point ("Why
can't I install a PV kvm guest?" among others) and is really a
distinction we don't need to force on people upfront: we are certainly
in a position to choose sensible defaults (and for kvm, paravirt/virtio
has always been setup in the background depending on what OS version
is being installed). The logic for the defaults is as follows:

- For the qemu libvirt driver, use the first available of the following:
kvm, plain qemu, xenner.

- For the xen libvirt driver, use paravirt if the user selects a URL
install and the tree supports it, otherwise use fullvirt.

- Always default to the host architecture for new VMs.

We allow the user to deviate from these defaults in the final screen
under the 'Advanced Options' section.

Also, you'll notice there is a generic 'Computer' icon in the wizard
header: this will soon be replaced by a custom icon.

So, some screenshots!

Page 1: VM Name and Install method

http://fedorapeople.org/~crobinso/virt-manager/newvm2/newvm-pg1-1.png
http://fedorapeople.org/~crobinso/virt-manager/newvm2/newvm-pg1-2.png

We totally scrapped the 'intro' page: I don't think anyone will miss it.
Having the 'name' box occupy an entire page by itself was also a bit
overkill, so we did away with that as well.

The one new piece here is the option to choose the libvirt connection to
install on. Rather than have the 'New' button on the main manager window
be conditionally sensitive, the user can now always launch the wizard,
choosing the connection from there. If there is only 1 active
connection, the drop down will appear as a label.

Page 2: Install media info

http://fedorapeople.org/~crobinso/virt-manager/newvm2/newvm-pg2-local.png
http://fedorapeople.org/~crobinso/virt-manager/newvm2/newvm-pg2-url.png
http://fedorapeople.org/~crobinso/virt-manager/newvm2/newvm-pg2-pxe.png

Pending what the user chooses on page 1, the appropriate screen will be
shown on page 2. This hasn't deviated much from the current options: the
one difference is that the OS Type/Variant drop downs will always be
here. This will allow us in the future to offer automatic distro
detection per selected install media (we may have this for URL installs
by the time the release goes out).

Since PXE installs require no extra input, the screen will only have the
OS Type/Variant option listed.

Page 3: CPU + Mem details

http://fedorapeople.org/~crobinso/virt-manager/newvm2/newvm-pg3-1.png

We dropped the max memory vs. default memory split in the existing
wizard: this doesn't have much meaning the qemu/kvm world, and even for
xen isn't something that needs to be asked up front. The user can always
change it later.

Also, rather than list tons of warning information about overcommitting
vcpus, we simply cap the amount at the number available on the host. If
for some reason a user wants to allocate more than the host amount of
virtual cpus to a VM (say for development purposes) it can easily be
done post-install.

Page 4: Storage

http://fedorapeople.org/~crobinso/virt-manager/newvm2/newvm-pg4-1.png

The main change here is that we removed the block device vs. file device
dichotomy: we are pretty capable of determining this distinction behind
the scenes.

The option is also now available to skip adding storage altogether: this
is useful in the case of Live CDs or diskless PXE booting.

When adding storage though, the two options are now:

1 - "Create a disk image on the computer's hard drive": We set up a
libvirt storage pool behind the scenes to point to the default location
(if using PolicyKit or running as root, this is /var/lib/libvirt/images)
and allocate a disk image based on the requested size.

In the future, the default location will be configurable with a global
preference.

2 - "Use managed or other existing storage" : This allows pointing to an
existing path, or provisioning more complex storage on demand (this is
dependent on a libvirt storage API aware browser dialog, which is
ongoing work. For the time being, this just launches a local GTK file
browser).

The one piece not shown here is the option to choose sparse Vs.
non-sparse. We will be putting this back in before the final version is
done.

Page 5: Summary and Advanced Options

http://fedorapeople.org/~crobinso/virt-manager/newvm2/newvm-pg5-1.png
http://fedorapeople.org/~crobinso/virt-manager/newvm2/newvm-pg5-2.png
http://fedorapeople.org/~crobinso/virt-manager/newvm2/newvm-pg5-3.png

The summary section is pretty straight forward, no surprises here.
The 'Advanced Options' section encompasses networking, hypervisor, and
architecture options. The hypervisor and arch defaults were explained above.

For networking, the default is:

- A bridge device if any exist, else
- Virtual Network 'default' (comes out of the box with libvirt), else
- First available virtual network, else
- no networking!

This logic will be globally configurable at some point, if you wanted to
use a specific bridge device or virtual network for all new VMs. We also
decided to put all the available networking options into 1 drop down,
rather than have 2 separate sections for bridges vs. virtual networking.


I think that covers all the significant bits, hopefully other than that
the screenshots speak for themselves. Any feedback is appreciated: none
of this set in stone.

Thanks,
Cole

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RFC: virt-manager: Redesigned 'New VM' wizard
 

Cole Robinson wrote:

Hi all,


Page 5: Summary and Advanced Options

http://fedorapeople.org/~crobinso/virt-manager/newvm2/newvm-pg5-1.png
http://fedorapeople.org/~crobinso/virt-manager/newvm2/newvm-pg5-2.png
http://fedorapeople.org/~crobinso/virt-manager/newvm2/newvm-pg5-3.png

The summary section is pretty straight forward, no surprises here.
The 'Advanced Options' section encompasses networking, hypervisor, and
architecture options. The hypervisor and arch defaults were explained above.

For networking, the default is:

- A bridge device if any exist, else
- Virtual Network 'default' (comes out of the box with libvirt), else
- First available virtual network, else
- no networking!


Networking being "hidden" seems a bit odd here. In a decent number of
the cases I have used the tool in (not all) i wanted to select this. It
it possible to show this information on the summary, and then have them
click into advanced to set it?


-- bk

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RFC: virt-manager: Redesigned 'New VM' wizard
 

Bryan Kearney wrote:
> Cole Robinson wrote:
>> Hi all,
>>
>>
>> Page 5: Summary and Advanced Options
>>
>> http://fedorapeople.org/~crobinso/virt-manager/newvm2/newvm-pg5-1.png
>> http://fedorapeople.org/~crobinso/virt-manager/newvm2/newvm-pg5-2.png
>> http://fedorapeople.org/~crobinso/virt-manager/newvm2/newvm-pg5-3.png
>>
>> The summary section is pretty straight forward, no surprises here.
>> The 'Advanced Options' section encompasses networking, hypervisor, and
>> architecture options. The hypervisor and arch defaults were explained
>> above.
>>
>> For networking, the default is:
>>
>> - A bridge device if any exist, else
>> - Virtual Network 'default' (comes out of the box with libvirt), else
>> - First available virtual network, else
>> - no networking!
>
> Networking being "hidden" seems a bit odd here. In a decent number of
> the cases I have used the tool in (not all) i wanted to select this. It
> it possible to show this information on the summary, and then have them
> click into advanced to set it?
>

In the times you were changing the default network selection, what was
the reason? Choosing from more than one virtual net or bridge? Just curious.

The reasoning here is we want the UI to be as simple as possible for the
out of the box user, which at most has 1 virtual network (and 1 bridge
device if using xen networking). For these users, we don't want them to
concern themselves with the default, we want it to 'just work'

Anything beyond that case requires explicit user setup ahead of time,
they should know full well when creating a new VM that they will have to
select some non-default network setup. Forcing them to click the
'Advanced Options' expander doesn't seem like a loss, compared to the
gain of allowing new users to not have to even think about networking
(either by showing the network drop down, or having a summary field
showing some choice they didn't explicitly make.)

Thanks,
Cole





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RFC: virt-manager: Redesigned 'New VM' wizard
 

Cole Robinson wrote:

Bryan Kearney wrote:


Cole Robinson wrote:


Hi all,


Page 5: Summary and Advanced Options

http://fedorapeople.org/~crobinso/virt-manager/newvm2/newvm-pg5-1.png
http://fedorapeople.org/~crobinso/virt-manager/newvm2/newvm-pg5-2.png
http://fedorapeople.org/~crobinso/virt-manager/newvm2/newvm-pg5-3.png

The summary section is pretty straight forward, no surprises here.
The 'Advanced Options' section encompasses networking, hypervisor, and
architecture options. The hypervisor and arch defaults were explained
above.

For networking, the default is:

- A bridge device if any exist, else
- Virtual Network 'default' (comes out of the box with libvirt), else
- First available virtual network, else
- no networking!


Networking being "hidden" seems a bit odd here. In a decent number of
the cases I have used the tool in (not all) i wanted to select this. It
it possible to show this information on the summary, and then have them
click into advanced to set it?




In the times you were changing the default network selection, what was
the reason? Choosing from more than one virtual net or bridge? Just curious.

The reasoning here is we want the UI to be as simple as possible for the
out of the box user, which at most has 1 virtual network (and 1 bridge
device if using xen networking). For these users, we don't want them to
concern themselves with the default, we want it to 'just work'

Anything beyond that case requires explicit user setup ahead of time,
they should know full well when creating a new VM that they will have to
select some non-default network setup. Forcing them to click the
'Advanced Options' expander doesn't seem like a loss, compared to the
gain of allowing new users to not have to even think about networking
(either by showing the network drop down, or having a summary field
showing some choice they didn't explicitly make.)

Thanks,
Cole





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We still need to get a "install using data from remote cobbler server"
in there :)


--Michael

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RFC: virt-manager: Redesigned 'New VM' wizard
 

On Mon, Mar 02, 2009 at 03:56:24PM +0100, Radek Hladik wrote:
> Cole Robinson napsal(a):
> >Hi all,
> >
> >The current 'New VM' wizard has clearly started to show its age. The
> >original design was largely based on xen specific assumptions and the
> >state of libvirt/virtinst at the time: many of those assumptions don't
> >apply today, or require a bit more thought since we now support both xen
> >and qemu based VMs.
> >
> >You can find a patch for a new implementation of the 'New VM' wizard here:
> >
> >http://fedorapeople.org/~crobinso/virt-manager/newvm2/virt-manager-newvm-01.patch
> >
>
> I have to say I like this redesign. However I am missing two options in
> the wizard at all (and I missed them in the old one too). I would like
> to be able to just create a new machine and do not install anything on
> it and/or do not startup it. So I would like to see the install method
> "No installation" and an advanced option "do not start the VM now".
> There are situations when you do not want to start the VM right away. I
> can address both issues with installing from dummy ISO image (actually
> RIP linux :-) ) and stopping the machine, but I think it would be nice
> to have the options right in the wizard.

Yeah, this is the so called 'import existing disk image' or 'run livecd'
use case. I can't remember off hand whether we were intending to put
this in the 'new vm' wizard or have a separate option for doing that.
It is probably easy enough to just have it all in one, now we've got the
"install media" choice up-front.

Daniel
--
|: Red Hat, Engineering, London -o- http://people.redhat.com/berrange/ :|
|: http://libvirt.org -o- http://virt-manager.org -o- http://ovirt.org :|
|: http://autobuild.org -o- http://search.cpan.org/~danberr/ :|
|: GnuPG: 7D3B9505 -o- F3C9 553F A1DA 4AC2 5648 23C1 B3DF F742 7D3B 9505 :|

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RFC: virt-manager: Redesigned 'New VM' wizard
 

Cole Robinson napsal(a):

Hi all,

The current 'New VM' wizard has clearly started to show its age. The
original design was largely based on xen specific assumptions and the
state of libvirt/virtinst at the time: many of those assumptions don't
apply today, or require a bit more thought since we now support both xen
and qemu based VMs.

You can find a patch for a new implementation of the 'New VM' wizard here:

http://fedorapeople.org/~crobinso/virt-manager/newvm2/virt-manager-newvm-01.patch



I have to say I like this redesign. However I am missing two options in
the wizard at all (and I missed them in the old one too). I would like
to be able to just create a new machine and do not install anything on
it and/or do not startup it. So I would like to see the install method
"No installation" and an advanced option "do not start the VM now".
There are situations when you do not want to start the VM right away. I
can address both issues with installing from dummy ISO image (actually
RIP linux :-) ) and stopping the machine, but I think it would be nice
to have the options right in the wizard.


Radek

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RFC: virt-manager: Redesigned 'New VM' wizard
 

Cole Robinson wrote:

Bryan Kearney wrote:

Cole Robinson wrote:

Hi all,


Page 5: Summary and Advanced Options

http://fedorapeople.org/~crobinso/virt-manager/newvm2/newvm-pg5-1.png
http://fedorapeople.org/~crobinso/virt-manager/newvm2/newvm-pg5-2.png
http://fedorapeople.org/~crobinso/virt-manager/newvm2/newvm-pg5-3.png

The summary section is pretty straight forward, no surprises here.
The 'Advanced Options' section encompasses networking, hypervisor, and
architecture options. The hypervisor and arch defaults were explained
above.

For networking, the default is:

- A bridge device if any exist, else
- Virtual Network 'default' (comes out of the box with libvirt), else
- First available virtual network, else
- no networking!

Networking being "hidden" seems a bit odd here. In a decent number of
the cases I have used the tool in (not all) i wanted to select this. It
it possible to show this information on the summary, and then have them
click into advanced to set it?



In the times you were changing the default network selection, what was
the reason? Choosing from more than one virtual net or bridge? Just curious.


I had a specific bridge I wanted it to use. Normally.. I want it to use
default, but in 2 use cases I have specific bridges which I want them to
use.




The reasoning here is we want the UI to be as simple as possible for the
out of the box user, which at most has 1 virtual network (and 1 bridge
device if using xen networking). For these users, we don't want them to
concern themselves with the default, we want it to 'just work'


I agree. Which is why I wonder can you show that in the review step..
and then have them click to edit.




Anything beyond that case requires explicit user setup ahead of time,
they should know full well when creating a new VM that they will have to
select some non-default network setup. Forcing them to click the
'Advanced Options' expander doesn't seem like a loss, compared to the
gain of allowing new users to not have to even think about networking
(either by showing the network drop down, or having a summary field
showing some choice they didn't explicitly make.)

Thanks,
Cole


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RFC: virt-manager: Redesigned 'New VM' wizard
 

Hi Cole,
this all looks great.
On Fri, Feb 27, 2009 at 05:50:15PM -0500, Cole Robinson wrote:
> The summary section is pretty straight forward, no surprises here.
> The 'Advanced Options' section encompasses networking, hypervisor, and
> architecture options. The hypervisor and arch defaults were explained above.
An option to select disk (scsi, ide, virtio) and network adapter model
(e1000, ...) as advanced options would be great (still defaulting to
virtio if supported via the osdict) since there are some OSes that don't
support all hardware out of the box and there are kvm/qemu versions that
have problems with certain adapter types.
Cheers,
-- Guido

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RFC: virt-manager: Redesigned 'New VM' wizard
 

On Mon, Mar 02, 2009 at 08:12:03PM +0100, Guido G?nther wrote:
> Hi Cole,
> this all looks great.
> On Fri, Feb 27, 2009 at 05:50:15PM -0500, Cole Robinson wrote:
> > The summary section is pretty straight forward, no surprises here.
> > The 'Advanced Options' section encompasses networking, hypervisor, and
> > architecture options. The hypervisor and arch defaults were explained above.
> An option to select disk (scsi, ide, virtio) and network adapter model
> (e1000, ...) as advanced options would be great (still defaulting to
> virtio if supported via the osdict) since there are some OSes that don't
> support all hardware out of the box and there are kvm/qemu versions that
> have problems with certain adapter types.

If there are combinations of OS,Disk that don't work IMHO we should
improve the OS type metadata so we don't use them. Choice of specific
hardware models is something we really want to keep out of the new VM
wizard, because the end user really isn't in a position to have the
knowledge to make suitable choices.

Daniel
--
|: Red Hat, Engineering, London -o- http://people.redhat.com/berrange/ :|
|: http://libvirt.org -o- http://virt-manager.org -o- http://ovirt.org :|
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RFC: virt-manager: Redesigned 'New VM' wizard
 

Bryan Kearney wrote:

Cole Robinson wrote:

Bryan Kearney wrote:

Cole Robinson wrote:

Hi all,


Page 5: Summary and Advanced Options

http://fedorapeople.org/~crobinso/virt-manager/newvm2/newvm-pg5-1.png
http://fedorapeople.org/~crobinso/virt-manager/newvm2/newvm-pg5-2.png
http://fedorapeople.org/~crobinso/virt-manager/newvm2/newvm-pg5-3.png

The summary section is pretty straight forward, no surprises here.
The 'Advanced Options' section encompasses networking, hypervisor, and
architecture options. The hypervisor and arch defaults were explained
above.

For networking, the default is:

- A bridge device if any exist, else
- Virtual Network 'default' (comes out of the box with libvirt), else
- First available virtual network, else
- no networking!

Networking being "hidden" seems a bit odd here. In a decent number of
the cases I have used the tool in (not all) i wanted to select this. It
it possible to show this information on the summary, and then have them
click into advanced to set it?



In the times you were changing the default network selection, what was
the reason? Choosing from more than one virtual net or bridge? Just
curious.


I had a specific bridge I wanted it to use. Normally.. I want it to use
default, but in 2 use cases I have specific bridges which I want them to
use.




The reasoning here is we want the UI to be as simple as possible for the
out of the box user, which at most has 1 virtual network (and 1 bridge
device if using xen networking). For these users, we don't want them to
concern themselves with the default, we want it to 'just work'


I agree. Which is why I wonder can you show that in the review step..
and then have them click to edit.




Anything beyond that case requires explicit user setup ahead of time,
they should know full well when creating a new VM that they will have to
select some non-default network setup. Forcing them to click the
'Advanced Options' expander doesn't seem like a loss, compared to the
gain of allowing new users to not have to even think about networking
(either by showing the network drop down, or having a summary field
showing some choice they didn't explicitly make.)



How dynamic is the network list under advanced?

What happens if you don't find the network you are looking for and decide to
go off an create it while leaving the wizard waiting on step 5? Do you have to
restart the wizard?


Also the wizard should support multiple NICs and disks - perhaps from step 5 -
be able to launch sub-wizards to add nic and add disk?


-regards
Subhendu

--
Subhendu Ghosh
Red Hat
Phone: +1-201-232-2851
Email: sghosh@redhat.com


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