Proposed plan for the Virtualization Getting Started Guide
Glen Rundblom
glen at rundblom.com
Tue Mar 17 21:56:26 UTC 2015
Hello all,
So one of the comments I was working on in boxes was including some
libvrt commands that will also show some of Boxes files /
infrastructure. If they are covered elsewhere maybe its not a good idea
to put those in the boxes section?
Thanks,
-Glen
On 03/17/2015 03:31 PM, Sandra McCann wrote:
> Thanks Dayle!
>
> I took a look at your RHEL quickstart and the flow is quite similar to
> what I'm proposing. I had a few comments:
>
> - yum install - does RHEL support yum groupinstall? That's what I was
> going to document instead of the individual installs. I have a small
> section after that to describe what some of the packages do (for the
> curious newbie :-)
>
> - screencaps - I debated this one and was leaning toward only having
> one or two for virt-manager. Most of the steps are obvious when you
> look at the virt-manager gui, so I thought I could get away with less
> images to create/maintain. That said, your approach makes it very
> obvious what screen the user should be on, so now I'm waffling on
> which approach to take.
>
> - other options to spin up a VM - I mention some of the other options
> in a list, just so the newbie user is aware. I figure only
> virt-manager and boxes will actually be covered in detail, and the
> rest would be in the admin/deploy guide.
>
> - boxes - I'm guessing this is only in Fedora, not RHEL? Anyway, I'm
> leaning toward having boxes as the first procedure to cover, since
> it's installed by default in Fedora workstation, where the newbie user
> is. Then a separate chapter for virt-manager.
>
> Thanks,
> Sandra
>
> On Mon, Mar 16, 2015 at 10:16 PM, Dayle Parker <dayleparker at redhat.com
> <mailto:dayleparker at redhat.com>> wrote:
>
> Hey Sandra,
>
> Thanks for initiating this! I help maintain this guide for RHEL
> and have sadly been too busy lately to get very involved on the
> Fedora side of things. :(
>
> I've been also looking at whether this book has the right user in
> mind for RHEL, and I think currently it's aimed at too many types
> of users -- I agree, the novice/GUI focus sounds best. I think
> some of this guide gets pretty technical and detailed in parts,
> and is probably not needed for a novice user.
>
> I've actually added a quick start chapter to the end of the guide
> [1] for RHEL7, so if you want to use any of it (the content is
> under the http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ license),
> go for it. (Or if you have any feedback on that chapter as a
> novice, feel free to share).
>
> Also, let me know if you need any help with the project -- I
> really appreciate you taking it on, and I'm happy to contribute in
> little bits if I can!
>
> Cheers,
> Dayle
>
>
>
> [1]
> https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/7/html/Virtualization_Getting_Started_Guide/chap-Virtualization_Getting_Started-Quickstart.html
>
>
>
>
> On 03/17/2015 11:03 AM, Glen Rundblom wrote:
>> I agree with the plan, and I am happy that Sandra proposed this
>> direction. I have been thinking of how to word my Boxes guide: is
>> this a how-to manual, or just just technical instructions. For
>> me: I learn more from how-to manuals and branch into technical
>> details as I need them. Also, working with the Novice in mind
>> makes me think of the "what if the person does not see..." or
>> "what if they encounter that" and try to solve issues they may
>> encounter as they try to do the task, but may not have the
>> ability to troubleshoot an issue that just happened during the
>> process.
>>
>> Also, writing for Novices/How-to is more forgiving of first and
>> second person voicing, which I have a tendency to do.
>>
>> So I have been working with the mindset of a how-to manual for
>> someone beginning with the application, because I am learning the
>> application, publican, docbook, git, mailing lists, and Linux all
>> together!)
>>
>> I have this conception that the more friendly and built for
>> novices something is, the more solid and polished it seems. I am
>> more then willing to put more time and work to make to do that.
>>
>> So, thank you Sandra!
>>
>> -Glen
>>
>>
>> On 03/16/2015 05:51 PM, Pete Travis wrote:
>>> 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 <mailto:immanetize at fedoraproject.org>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> Dayle Parker
> Senior Technical Writer
> Red Hat Asia Pacific - Brisbane, Australia
> dayleparker at redhat.com <mailto:dayleparker at redhat.com>
>
>
>
>
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