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The administrator’s role in Cloud PowerVC Manager

By Becky Dimock posted Tue April 26, 2016 12:00 AM

  

By Bapiraju Nandury

PowerVC Developer



 



IBM Cloud PowerVC Manager, which is a new cloud offering in the PowerVC family, provides the self-service cloud portal for IBM Power Systems that is built on OpenStack; it also includes all the functions of PowerVC Standard Edition.  PowerVC provides an easy way to provision and manage virtual machines on PowerVM-based Power Systems based private clouds.



 



Cloud PowerVC Manager comes with a “self-service portal,” which allows users to quickly and reliably deploy virtual machines by using deploy templates. Deploy templates are created from the images that are accessible to a project, including images that are captured by self-service users. Because images are tied to one project, a deploy template is exclusively tied to one project.  However, multiple deploy templates can be created from the same image.   



 



There are two relevant roles in self-service portal functionality; the administrator and the self-service user.  An administrator can define project policies, approve requests, and create and manage deploy templates.  The administrator also assigns users the self-service role as appropriate.  Self-service users can deploy virtual machines based on deploy templates and can manage their virtual machines.   For more details about what self-service users can do, read “New PowerVC Cloud Self-Service facility”.



 



What can you do in Cloud PowerVC Manager as an administrator?



Let’s explore the role that the administrator plays in more detail. When you log in to a project as an administrator, the PowerVC administrator user interface is loaded. On the left navigation, you will see links for images, VMs, hosts, networks, and storage.  All of those resources except hosts belong to the  project you logged in to.  The home page shows utilization information of the processes and memory across all the hosts.



You can do the following in the PowerVC user interface as an administrator:




  1. You can manage self-service users in the project you have logged in to.  You can view the list of users and groups that have been assigned the self-service role.  You can add and/or remove user roles via the OpenStack CLI. However, if a user has been assigned the self-service role in a project, do not assign him or her another role in that project.  You can learn about the various roles available in “PowerVC Security Roles.”

  2. You can manage deploy templates – Create, edit, and delete deploy templates, list all the deploy templates in your project, view their details, and use them to deploy a VM.

  3. You can manage requests from self-service users – You can approve or reject requests made by self-service users for VM management (deploy/expiration/extension/capture/snapshot/etc.).

  4. You can manage your VMs – List the VMs in your project and view their details, perform VM lifecycle operations (deploy, start, stop, restart, delete and resize) and capture VMs to create an image.



The following tasks are configured using the PowerVC OpenStack CLI:




  1. Set project policies. Policies let you specify self-service user actions that require administrator approval.  You can set the following policies:


    1. Default expiration period for all VMs created by self-service users in this project.

    2. How many VM expiration extension requests are automatically approved.  After reaching the limit, extension requests must be approved by the administrator.

    3. How long a VM expiration extension request waits before being auto-approved.  This is helpful in managing the pending requests in timely manner, and avoiding the inadvertent expiration of VMs due to delayed approvals.

    4. How long to keep an expired VM before it is deleted.

    5. How many deploys a self-service user can perform without requiring administrator approval.

    6. How many times a self-service user can capture an image (or take a snapshot) without requiring administrator approval.



  2. Add and/or remove user roles.

  3. View metering data for users in the project.



 



UI Characteristics



The self-service portal is integrated into the standard PowerVC UI. When you log in to Cloud PowerVC Manager, you will visit the PowerVC login page just as you do today. After logging in, the information that you see varies,



























Roles



Views



Dashboard



Self-service user



Deploy templates, VMs, Requests



Self service



Administrator



All PowerVC Standard screens + Deploy templates,  Requests, VMs (including expiration)



Standard



All other roles



All PowerVC Standard screens



Standard




 



With the ability to manage self-service users and their requests, manage deploy templates, and view metering data, the administrator role is powerful in Cloud PowerVC Manager.  If you have questions about the administrator role, post them below – we’d love to hear from you!  And don’t forget to follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.



 


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