Every application I have ever worked on had the same end goal; provide useful, simple, easy to use and visually appealing screens. Don't confuse me. Don't make me click hundreds of times. Don't leave important information out. If something fails, tell me what to do next.
In designing a set of views and screens for my current project, the problem statement can be summarized as follows:
- Show me where my applications are in my network
- Let me pick the important applications and designate them as such
- Let me define how these applications should be conversing
- Do some SDN magic on these applications
- Show me where my applications are in my ring
In my Network view, I can search for specific virtual machines, among other things, and put them into an affinity group, thereby capturing the importance of an application in my network.
I am interested in how my three applications:
- authhost71
- authbox81
- authclient62
Everything in App1 talks with DB1, bidirectionally, and I'd really like these conversations to be isolated from other ring traffic.
Is my ring ready for the SDN magic fitting algorithm to do it's thing? Looks formed, healthy, good to go.
For each of my conversations, where are my applications traversing the ring? My fitting results shows me how each application in App1 talks with each application in DB1; where it enters my ring, how it traverses my ring and where it exits my ring.
I found some applications in my network and after affinitizing them ("is that word? affinitizing? it will be soon...."), I see clearly how my ring is handling their conversations and isolating them from all others.
Taking a complex set of data and simplifying the ability to work with that data is what a good user interface is all about. Show me an affinity? I saw an affinity today.
