if exceed volume snapshot quota - no validation check

[Cindy Lu]

Go to Admin > Project and set your volume snapshot quota to the number of snapshots you currently have. Then go to Project > Volumes and Create Snapshot from a volume you have.

You will be given a generic error message: "Unable to create volume snapshot."

We should do a validation check and return a better error message.

[Santiago Baldassin (santiago-b-baldassin)]

I don't think we should replicate the same logic that's already in place in cinder. Maybe we can include this case in the blueprint for improve error messages: https://blueprints.launchpad.net/horizon/+spec/improve-error-message-details-for-usability

[Julie Pichon (jpichon)]

We have to balance this with offering a good user experience, which often involves giving feedback early to a user that they may not be able to perform an operation.

Does the API give us a useful message in that particular case that we could surface to the user?

[Santiago Baldassin (santiago-b-baldassin)]

we do get a useful message from cinder: VolumeLimitExceeded: Maximum number of volumes allowed (1) exceeded.

[Susan Tan (susan-tan-fleckerl)]

On the dashboard itself when you see the screenshot, I expect to be able to create a volume of "1GB", because there should be just 1 GB left. What should be the expected behavior when only 1GB for volume creation is left and you wish to create a volume of 1GB?

But I am not allowed to create a volume of "1GB" and instead hit the exception. The error message "Unable to create volume" is very unclear and does not tell the user why the exception was raised.

[Susan Tan (susan-tan-fleckerl)]

 I suppose I can change the error message to be "A volume of 1GB cannot be created as you only have 1GB of your quota available. " But that does not seem to make sense for the user to not be able to use that last remaining 1GB. Maybe I might be misunderstanding some technical component.

[Julie Pichon (jpichon)]

Susan, I suspect this might be a separate bug... What's the error in the logs? Can you reproduce when trying to create the volume using the cinder CLI tool? If so this may be a Cinder bug.

[Liz Blanchard (lblanchard)]

For this bug I do think that as Julie mentions, notifying the user early is the key for fixing this from a UX point of view. We've been talking a lot about not allowing the user to pull up the "Launch an Instance" modal is certain cases (No quota, no network defined) and notifying the user why they can't click this button. See this screenshot for the design idea:
http://people.redhat.com/~lsurette/OpenStack/Disabled%20Button

Perhaps we could apply this logic to Volume Snapshots if there is absolutely no quota available? It would avoid the user from filling out the entire modal and clicking the action to create and then getting a message.

[Rob Cresswell (robcresswell-deactivatedaccount)]

Susans bug seems distinct from this one, regarding storage quota rather than snapshot quota.

My proposal was to fade the Create Snapshot selection, catching the process early. I'm unsure whether to then:

- Append a brief error description to the faded message ("Max Quota") for example. Could shorten the button to ensure it doesn't overflow and make the dropdown ugly, with"Create... [Max Quota]" for example.

- Enable a small, but marginally more verbose message on hover, such as "Maximum Volume Snapshot Quote reached"

Anyone with UX/UI opinions, feel free to tell me what to change.

[OpenStack Infra (hudson-openstack)]

Fix proposed to branch: master
Review: https://review.openstack.org/114589

[OpenStack Infra (hudson-openstack)]

Reviewed: https://review.openstack.org/114589
Committed: https://git.openstack.org/cgit/openstack/horizon/commit/?id=df3d3d0ca627f1f0728138d09f970c9b15c2f963
Submitter: Jenkins
Branch: master

commit df3d3d0ca627f1f0728138d09f970c9b15c2f963
Author: Rob Cresswell <email address hidden>
Date: Fri Aug 15 06:23:20 2014 -0700

    Validation check if exceeding vol snapshot quota

    Disables "Create Snapshot" action for each volume in the Volumes table,
    if the Volume Snapshot Quota is already at max.
    Appends "Quota Exceeded" to the action button for user feedback.
    Extends "test_get_data" to account for new Cinder api call.
    Adds "test_create_snapshot_button_disabled_when_quota_exceeded"
    to make sure action button state is altered when snapshots used is equal
    to max snapshots.

    Change-Id: I56798869f5e870cef2dd81301330b83aade040d4
    Closes-Bug: 1333481