Proposed plan for the Virtualization Getting Started Guide

[Pete Travis]

On 03/16/2015 02:28 PM, Sandra McCann wrote:
>
> Hi folks -
>
>
> We’ve been batting around ideas for the virtualization guides for a
> bit now in irc, but I’d like to get some more feedback on the approach
> we can take.
>
>
> Seems there are two personas involved. Using our draft personas
> <https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Docs_Project_Focus#Personas>we have :
>
>  *
>
>     Technical Tony - experienced IT person virtualizing on servers
>     etc, knows his stuff and is spinning up VMs like they’re candy.
>
>  *
>
>     Novice Ned (or Novice Nancy in my case :-) - Fairly new to
>     virtualization, and looking to spin up a VM or two for her own work.
>
>
> Given these two personas, I’d like to suggest that the Virtualization
> Getting Started guide be targeted to Novice Nancy. To do this we would:
>
>  *
>
>     Add an installing virtualization tools chapter - simple effort to
>     install the virtualization group package and bring up
>     virt-manager. (smccann)
>
>  *
>
>     Add an ‘Creating Guests with Virt-Manager chapter - copying from
>     here
>     <http://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/Fedora_Draft_Documentation/0.1/html/Virtualization_Deployment_and_Administration_Guide/chap-Virtualization_Host_Configuration_and_Guest_Installation_Guide-Guest_Installation_Virt_Manager-Creating_guests_with_virt_manager.html>.
>     (smccann)
>
>  *
>
>     Adding a ‘Creating Guests with Boxes chapter (grundblom)
>
>  *
>
>     Make minor edits as needed to remove Fedora 19 references and any
>     references (if present) to a larger set of virtualization guides
>     that may not be available as F21 guides yet.
>
>
> I also had one question -
>
>  *
>
>     not sure what to do about the list of emulated devices - is it
>     accurate?
>     http://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/Fedora/19/html/Virtualization_Getting_Started_Guide/sec-virtualized-hardware-devices.html
>
>
> Anyway, I’d like to get the getting started done and committed before
> considering the Admin and Deploy guide (because..ahem.. I AM Novice
> Nancy here and it will take longer for me to parse that guide).
>
>
> Thoughts?
>
> Sandra
>
>
>
>
This seems like a solid plan to me.  There's a lot of content in the
guide now that's reads strictly as a launch point for the larger guides,
so something more like purging paragraphs might be more appropriate than
simply removing references.  You have a good idea of where you want to
go with it; I only make that point to ensure you don't feel obligated to
keep the existing content and write around it.

The hardware list is accurate, but not complete.  You might want to
focus on a few specific pieces of hardware instead of listing and
explaining all possible options though, ie:

    This is how you add a network device.  This virtio option might need
these extra drivers on a windows guest. 

    This is how you add a virtual block device. This virtio option might
need these extra drivers on a windows guest. ( depending on how deep you
want to go, you could cover switching out a windows installation iso for
the virtio driver iso so it can see virtio storage, then switching
back.  There's a definite performance improvement in virtio over SATA
emulation, but the setup is going to add a page or two to your
instructions)

    This is how you provide an ISO to the guest.

    This is how you share part of the host filesystem with a linux guest

    These are all spice related devices.  If you choose spice ( the
default ) you get them automatically, here is what they do.



Things like memory, CPU, input devices are set up automatically, or
during initial creation.  IMO my the time you have documented the device
types that might need some explanation, the user is familiar with the
device management screen and knows where to go, they don't need much or
any explanation.

Your plan seems GUI focused; I like that.  It makes for a much easier
read for new users when it doesn't look like you need to learn a bunch
of scary programming to make it work :)  We can put cli stuff somewhere
else.

-- 
-- Pete Travis
 - Fedora Docs Project Leadt
 - 'randomuser' on freenode
 - immanetize at fedoraproject.org

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