Beginners guide: graphical overview of XCP-ng ecosystem

[borzel]

Context:

Often people at the forum got very confused about terms in XCP-ng universe, which software does what and so on. Sometimes the language is the biggest problem and you have to explain the same stuff many times and with many missunderstandings on both sides.

Idea:

We should draw a picture where one can easily see "what does what" and how the pieces interact with each other. Examples: XO stores backups on a NFS share. XCP-ng uses a NFS share as SR. A pool uses shared SR for fast live migration. And so on. Yadda yadda :-)

How to do that

I have no idea ;-)

@olivierlambert what is the cool tool that draws the funny XO images where you explain your concepts? Like here: https://xen-orchestra.com/assets/partner2.jpg

Things that should be shown

All-in-one, Beginners level:

• [x] one XCP-ng host
  • [ ] OS disks (mdraid)
  • [ ] local SR on free space of OS disks (mdraid)
  • [ ] local iso SR on OS filesystem
  • [x] XAPI Database (and hint to back it up!)
• [x] some sort of NAS with NFS share for Backup
• [x] XenOrchestra/XOA
  • [ ] backup methods (metadata, full, delta, snapshot)
  • [ ] ex-/importing VMs
• [x] XCP-ng Center
• [x] xe cli

Next levels should add:

• [ ] second XCP-ng host
  • [ ] NFS/iSCSI SR
  • [ ] local/NFS/SMB iso SR
  • [ ] Pool(s)
  • [ ] XAPI Database replication in the pool
• XenOrchestra/XOA
  • [ ] all the remaining backup methods (repl, ...)
  • [ ] LDAP
  • [ ] migrating VMs (between hosts/pools)

[borzel]

Little prototype I made in Inkscape (I'm not an artist): xcp-ng_ecosystem.svg.zip

[HippiekillerOG]

I like this.. hopefully I see it get more detailed. Btw, on the topic of icons, what's your goto app to 'draw' out a network diagram with xcp-ng hosts? Can find good preloaded icons.

Btw.. virtuilisation -> virtualization

[stormi]

I'm not sure that everything would fit on a single picture, since there are different situations. Maybe rather several pictures depending on what you want to show. For example, I wouldn't necessarily put the single host example and the pool on the same picture. One could have a drawing explaining the simple single host case, then introduce the pool as the next step.

About the icons and assets you'd use for drawing, don't forget that they must be compatible with free software licenses.

[borzel]

I thought to maybe make it interactive (clickable SVG?) ... but for static image use we should divide it. Just wanted to know if the idea at all is suitable :-)

What about a git repo for such documentation things? Or is there already a place for that?

About the icons and assets you'd use for drawing, don't forget that they must be compatible with free software licenses.

Yes, I thought about that and therefore you see for now just our own icons :-) But at first the layout/spacing is important, later we can replace elements as it grows. Google image search has great filters for license types ;-)

[stormi]

For now, I'd like to centralize all our docs on the wiki, you can display images in it (won't make it very interactive though).

[borzel]

for not loosing any of my stuff, I created a "temporaly" git repo: https://github.com/borzel/xcp-ng-guide

[borzel]

Making progress... Do not forget, it's not about design (yet), it's about information sharing...

[sapcode]

Https://Draw.io is a good free tool and can import / export to SVG and others..