Widget Types

There are a number of different types of widget, each of which have a different selection of fields that can be displayed, and different actions that can be performed. The available widgets are as follows:

• Servers
  
• Disks
  
• Snapshots
  
• VDCs
  
• Networks
  
• Firewalls
  
• Images
  
• Jobs
  
• Resources
  
• SSH Keys
  
• Users
  
• Groups
  
• Unit Balance
  

 Smart Filters in Widgets

Result Filtering

The results any Widget shows are based on the filters that are placed upon it, you can change these filters by clicking the modify icon in the top right hand corner of any widget where you have permission to do so. You then have a range of filters you can pick on depending on what type of resource the Widget is showing, for example in a Servers Widget some of the fields you can filter by are:

• UUID - The Universally Unique Identifier for a virtual machine. This is useful if you want to use a widget to monitor a specific virtual machine.
• Name - The name assigned to the virtual machine.
• VDC - The Virtual Data Center (VDC) in which the virtual machine is located.
• Created Date - The date on which the virtual machine was created.
• Status - The status of the virtual machine, for example whether it is active, in maintenance mode, or stopped.
• CPUs - The number of CPUs allocated to the virtual machine.
• RAM - The amount of RAM allocated to the virtual machine.

Key Filtering

You can also filter by keys that you have added to any resource. This is a powerful capability that allows you to manage and filter resources based on your own business logic and categorisation, such as per department, budget, maintainer etc.

Using Result and Key filtering gives you full control over what resources you want to see in the widget. For example a widget could be filtered to only display: 

• All Servers in VDC 'alpha' that are running.
• All Resources in Project 'inkara' (by setting a resource key to 'Project' with a value of 'inkara').
• All Servers being maintained by 'Dave' (by setting a resource key to maintainer and a value to 'Dave').
• All Servers that were created more than two months ago but aren't running.

Picking Fields

Depending on what you are filtering and why, you may wish to add or remove certain fields from the widget view to simplify the view. For example if you are prefiltering based on servers that are running, having a status field showing you that they are all running is somewhat redundant, but you may wish to ensure that the columns for CPU and RAM are still available. You can add and remove these from within the Manage Widget dialog.

Key Field Additions

As well as adding or removing certain preset fields about a resource you also have the ability to add information that you have stored in keys against the resource. For example you may have build a filter showing a list of servers that are currently running, and against each of these servers you have added a key of 'project' with a value of which project it is part of. Simply by adding an additional field of 'project' from the option at the bottom of the Manage Widget dialog allows you to easily display this information next to each server.

Using Widgets

When you have finished modifying and placing your widget, you can then use it at any time. Most Widgets have the ability to create new resources of the type represented by the widget by clicking a button in the bottom left of the widget.

Widgets also have a multi action popup menu in the bottom left hand corner of the widget. This allows you to select and perform actions on individual or multiple resources at once, for example starting five servers at once.

Summary

Widgets have been designed to make it easier for you to view, manage and deploy resources in a way that suits you and your business best, by offering all the configuration options you need to customise them to suit them to your requirements.