RHEV Manager Tabs Explained

RHEV Manager UI Explained.

Datacenter

It is a collection of a number of clusters of servers, storage and networks.The data center is the highest level
container for all physical and logical resources within a managed virtual environment.

Clusters

A set of physical hosts that are treated as a resource pool for a set of Virtual Machines is known as
a cluster. Hosts in a cluster share the same network infrastructure and the same storage.


Storage

A data center relies on adequate and accessible physical storage. The storage pool is a logical entity that contains a standalone image repository of a certain type, either
iSCSI ,or Fiber Channel, or NFS. Each Storage Pool may contain several storage domains, for Guests images, for ISO images and for Import/Export images.

Note: For every datacenter we need two storage domains and NFS iso Library is not mandatory for every  Data Centre on RHEV to Operational . Its just to store your software libraries to attach to the virtual machines .

1) Guest Images (data)
2) ISO Images (iso dump to spindle the Virtual machines)
3) Import/Export images.

 If you are creating your second datacenter of ISCSI Type, it is enough to create only one Storage domain to store guest images and you can detach the iso domain from data center 1 and attach it in your new datacenter to spindle up new virtual machine, so that replicating the same iso  dump is not necessary.

Storage SubTabs Explained 

What is delete and destroy actions of a storage domain ? 

Delete will remove the complete data as well as the data base reference about that disk from the RHEVM Manager MSSQL DB .

 Destroy will keep all data intact and its only remove the reference about the storage from the RHEV Manager rhevm database .

It will be usefull in a scenario where the user deletes or some how lost his LUN and deletion is not possible because the LUN is not longer there .

Hosts

A host is a physical server that runs either Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Hypervisor or Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.4 and later to hosts one or more virtual servers. Hosts are grouped into Clusters. Virtual servers can be migrated from one host to another within a server cluster.

Virtual Machines

Virtual machines can be either virtual servers or virtual desktops.

Virtual servers

Virtual servers can be also grouped into Clusters. Virtual servers can be migrated from one physical host to another within a cluster.

Virtual desktops

Desktop is a virtual machine containing an operating system and a set of applications. Desktops can
be grouped into Pools.

Snapshots

A snapshot is a view of a virtual server's operating system and all its applications at a given point in time. It can be used to save the settings of a virtual server before an upgrade, or before new
applications are installed.

In case of problems, the parameters from the snapshot can be used to restore the virtual server to the state before the upgrade or installation.


Templates

A template is a "model" virtual machine with a unique configuration and settings. A virtual server that is based on a particular template acquires the configurations and settings of the template.

Thus, templates are used to conveniently and efficiently create a set of similar virtual machines. Using templates is the quickest way of creating large number of virtual machines in a single step. It is equivalent to virt-clone in xen and libvirt kvm with some advanced features.


Custom Actions

A custom action is an API scripting (windows power shell scripting) extension that contains sets of script commands.

You can check the below link for more detailed information on what custom action you can perform.


If you really like to learn more on RHEV API Scripting and  powershell  you can check the below Urls for more information

http://docs.redhat.com/docs/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Virtualization_for_Servers/2.2/html-single/API_Guide/index.html

http://secretgeek.net/powershell_beginner.asp


Events and Monitors

Alerts, warnings, or other notice about activities within the system help the administrator to monitor the performance and running of various resources. Monitoring details can be displayed in both graphic and textual fashion. Even you can configure  your RHEVM for Mail Alert  based on the status of the VM, Host Load , Migraton status etc.

More to come .....