Feature request - VM folders
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Please point me to a post if this feature request has already been posted.
The ability to place VMs into folders would be beneficial for cluster users to organize their VMs by purpose or team. While tagging and filtering VMs by tag can do this organization, the ability to view folders at a glance would help users navigate more quickly. Folders could also provide an endpoint for other actions.
- ACLs - providing users access only to certain folders
- Resource usage limitations/quotas
- VM group actions, such as power all on or off
- Add VMs dynamically into folders by tags
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What would you want different about the current way this is done with tags? Right now on the home page of XOA you can filter by tag, I feel like that would achieve mostly the same goal, no?
I know you mentioned a few things here that could be applied to folders, I guess my question is, if those things could be done via tags, and you can easily filter by tags, would that achieve the same goal? Or is there something I'm missing here.
Either way, feature ideas are always welcome in my mind.
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@planedrop Tags would be fine if there's a way to also create tag objects similar to folders in the VM view. In other words, create some object that lists all VMs with the tag 'ServiceVMs', for example, and that object stay in the users' VM view. The object would stay in place without needing to type a tag filter each time, again similar to having VM folders.
Once that object is created and the VMs populate according to their tag, the ACLs could be applied so users have access only to those VMs with certain tags, and group actions could be taken on those VMs inside that object.
Keeping the object view in place is a major part of this feature request, whether it be a VM folder or some object based on tags. That way, all of these folders/tag containers/pick your name are always viewable at a glance rather than filtering for each tag at a time.
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@planedrop actually s/object/tag container/g. I think 'tag container' might be a more apt name if 'folder' isn't appropriate.
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This might require a pretty large amount of work (if you combine folders with "scope" in terms of permissions and ACLs inheritance). What's your feeling @julien-f ?
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@olivierlambert Agile-ize it.
Make the tag container/folder view first, then add on features as time and resources permit? -
Sure, but it's important to understand to where we want to go in the end. Especially on the UI/UX design
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@olivierlambert Plus with the up coming new XO design, these ask may already be realized.
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Nope
We didn't plan for folders initially. But the UI is not finalized anyway -
Something like folders might be a good way to organize something like VApps
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@JeffBerntsen Ooooo I like this idea.
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@olivierlambert
I know this thread has kinda gone stagnant, but is an upcoming XO/UI change planning to incorporate ACLs with tags? This feature would be greatly appreciated, as carving out ACLs for individual VMs becomes very tedious.I can currently assign VMs to self-service resources, but the default permission when doing so is "admin" and I have users where I'd like to assign a lower level roll in bulk. I know I can go back and modify that ACL, but again...tedious, especially at scale. For the self-service resources maybe adding an "Admins", "Operators", & "Viewers" component in place of the current "Users" would be easier?
Maybe there is something else I'm missing?
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ACLs v2 will be included later in XO 6, it's not a top priority right now with the already huge amount of work to make XO 6 itself. This might change if we grow fast enough to continue to hire people to scale horizontally.
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My 2 cents as current vSphere user (searching for replacement after new VMware prices knocked my socks off):
Tags in XO are currently only "view filtering feature", nothing more.
There is no method in XO to (without selecting each vm separately):- attach ACL to group of vms
- select group of vms for backup job
Tags are also error-prone, as I have to manually enter tag name each time (for each vm) and possibly make a typo (there are not even "hints" from current tag names).
I would like to add vm to "group" and this should cause deriving ACLs from "group" and adding to backup job assigned to "group", etc; whatever this "group" would be - folder/tag.
As I have ~500 vms, grouping is "must have" for me.
I'll live if "groups" are tags not folders.
But not having this at all in XO is BIG disadvantage for me.
(without this I quite like what I found in xcp-ng/xo).For me - something like folder seems more natural for such things than tags, but I am biased (as vSphere has folders...).
And generally - in current situation (new prices for vSphere) I suspect there may be more users like me, searching for vSphere replacement, and making XO more friendly for them would be advantage for them...
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@lukasz-engel What do you mean by "select group of vms for backup job"? That is entirely possible unless I'm missing something, I have backup jobs that base which VMs they back up on tags.
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We do not doubt about that: we have a component already designed to assign any properties en masse to any kind of objects. It will be usable in XO Lite & XO 6.
For the folder view, that's also something we'll do in XO 6 at least (XO Lite it's less likely, maybe). I think @clemencebx is aware about this (but repinged her
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@lukasz-engel said in Feature request - VM folders:
My 2 cents as current vSphere user (searching for replacement after new VMware prices knocked my socks off):
Tags in XO are currently only "view filtering feature", nothing more.
There is no method in XO to (without selecting each vm separately):- attach ACL to group of vms
- select group of vms for backup job
Tags are also error-prone, as I have to manually enter tag name each time (for each vm) and possibly make a typo (there are not even "hints" from current tag names).
I would like to add vm to "group" and this should cause deriving ACLs from "group" and adding to backup job assigned to "group", etc; whatever this "group" would be - folder/tag.
As I have ~500 vms, grouping is "must have" for me.
I'll live if "groups" are tags not folders.
But not having this at all in XO is BIG disadvantage for me.
(without this I quite like what I found in xcp-ng/xo).For me - something like folder seems more natural for such things than tags, but I am biased (as vSphere has folders...).
And generally - in current situation (new prices for vSphere) I suspect there may be more users like me, searching for vSphere replacement, and making XO more friendly for them would be advantage for them...
I do think a lot of this 'group' idea could be made possible using the self service resourceSets, especially if we were able to maybe set "Operator" ACLs on said resourceSet. Maybe even allow tags to be applied to a resourceSet so things like backups would be applied to entire resourceSets vs. an individual VM?
