[virt-tools-list] Vm Grouping

[Cole Robinson]

On 04/28/2015 10:43 AM, Alexander Innes wrote:
> Hi everyone,
> 
> Just a quick question, is it possible to group VMs somehow?
> 
> Im thinking along the lines of groups such as "Windows network" which has W
> machines, "Test Services" with has X machines, "Nix boxes" which has Y
> machines, "Bobs machines" which has 100 machines (the use case is we have a
> testbed hypervisor in use by a few people, everyone can make / scratch
> machines but it would be nice to group em), kind of like:
> 
> +Windows :
>    - A
>    - B
> -Linux
> -Bob
> +Test
>    - A
>    - C
> 
> So rather than all machines being displayed in a list they can be grouped,
> collapsed when im not doing anything with them, start and stop a load at once,
> (If that makes sense?) I could do it VIA the cli by just a "for i in A B C; do
> start $i; done", but was wondering if there was a "nice" way of doing it,
> 
> Or if there isnt would it be that hard to do? Im thinking maybe a field in the
> meta-data column for Libvirt (however my coding skills are awful so anything i
> make would probably make your eyes bleed! ;D) (Or if there is something
> similar already that i don't know about id be glad to know!)
> 

I would take patches for the ability to select multiple VMs at a time and
perform actions on them. This might be a couple hundred lines of code but most
of it would be straight forward boiler plate stuff.

But I don't want to add explicit group organizing in the UI. FWIW a few people
have requested it over the years but my opinion hasn't really changed; it
would be a decent chunk of work, relevant to a very small minority of users,
and it's a non-critical feature that only a fairly sophisticated user base
would need, so they can come up with workarounds if needed. The value
proposition just doesn't add up to make it work testing + maintaining for eternity

If you institute some type of naming policy for VMs to use a particular prefix
(or set VM titles), you can get VMs to always group alphabetically in the UI.
Coupled with the 'operate on multiple VMs' would get you most of the way I think

- Cole