UI incorrectly suggests instance snapshots are different from images

[Lorin Hochstein]

Some users are confused by the "Images and Snapshots" view, because it suggests that "Images" and "Instance Snapshots" are conceptually separate entities. But instance snapshots are images, they just have some additional metadata that describes that they were created via snapshot.

I think it's more consistent with the underlying OpenStack objects to think about "snapshot" as an action that creates an image, rather than thinking about a "snapshot" as a separate entity. In other words, you perform a snapshot to create an image from a running instance.

I think it would reduce confusion if the "Images" view included images created via snapshot. This would have the additional benefit of making things more consistent with the command-line interface, where the command to create an image via snapshot is "nova image-create":

$ nova help image-create
usage: nova image-create [--poll] <server> <name>

Create a new image by taking a snapshot of a running server.

This would also simplify the common task of booting a new instance, since a user doesn't need to think about where the image was created via snapshot or uploaded directly.

[Victoria Martinez de la Cruz (vkmc)]

Is a good point... maybe we could add an extra field to the images table to specify if the image is a snapshot from some instance.

[Lorin Hochstein (lorinh)]

Victoria:

That sounds like a good idea.

[Joe T (joe-topjian-v)]

I'm more in favor of just recognizing snapshots as images and only using the term "snapshot" during the action of creating an image from an existing image.

Adding a column to the images table might make it more easier to recognize a snapshot, but by metadata only. It's technically an image in every other way -- unless I'm missing something?

To me, a snapshot would be more true of a snapshot if it had a hard relationship to the original image (meaning, if the original image was deleted, the snapshot would no longer work) or if the snapshot was just a thin-provisioned or copy-on-write version of the original image.

I hope that makes sense? Basically, call it what it is: an image.

[Gabriel Hurley (gabriel-hurley)]

I'm okay with re-combining them into a single table (they were this way once upon a time before). The people who argued in favor of them being separate are mostly gone now anyways. ;-)

[OpenStack Infra (hudson-openstack)]

Fix proposed to branch: master
Review: https://review.openstack.org/30064

[OpenStack Infra (hudson-openstack)]

Reviewed: https://review.openstack.org/30064
Committed: http://github.com/openstack/horizon/commit/8a0b4c7e472c44f006e466e351b9fdf42d53b7ce
Submitter: Jenkins
Branch: master

commit 8a0b4c7e472c44f006e466e351b9fdf42d53b7ce
Author: Jiri Tomasek <email address hidden>
Date: Thu May 16 09:12:24 2013 +0200

    Mix snapshots and images tables together

    Don't filter snapshots from images data, display image_type column in images table,
    don't translate image string in get_image_type method, don't show LaunchImage button when
    image is in different state than active, remove snapshots table from the UI, update tests

    Fixes: bug #1140760

    Change-Id: Ie6cc5bc98fa97de00b55540fe9f60e90d20acab3