The meaning of "Disk GB Hours" is not really clear

[Matthias Runge]

when visiting the admin overview page,
http://localhost:8000/admin/

 the usage summary lists

Disk GB Hours

The same term "This Period's GB-Hours: 0.00" can be found e.g here: https://github.com/openstack/horizon/blob/master/horizon/templates/horizon/common/_usage_summary.html

[Matthias Runge (mrunge)]

The original report also contained a screenshot.

[Matthias Runge (mrunge)]

It was https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1050202

[Matthias Runge (mrunge)]

So the issue is, that the term "Disk GB Hours" as a category is not really clear. A helping text would be good here.

http://docs.openstack.org/user-guide/content/usage_statistics.html

Lists, that it's reported by nova (but still confusing)

[Julie Pichon (jpichon)]

Adding openstack-manuals, maybe we can also clarify in the documentation what "Disk GB hours" actually means.

[Tom Fifield (fifieldt)]

I think if the term is unclear, it is a bug that should be fixed in the code, not the documentation.

[Tom Fifield (fifieldt)]

Does horizon have the ability to do little tooltips on hover/click? I could see that as one way to get a decent explanation of the term without making the layout messy ...

[Thai Tran (tqtran)]

@Tom FiField: Yes, horizon does have the ability. Although not sure if this is an approach most would agree with. UX expertise on this would be appreciated.

[Liz Blanchard (lblanchard)]

I completely agree with Tom that this is not something that should be fixed in documentation. It needs to be fixed right where the user may encounter the confusion.

From a UX perspective I could see either:

1) Updating the term to become more clear. Unfortunately, I'm not sure what this might be. Matthias -- Did you have a suggestion to make this more clear to you?
2) If a clear, concise term can not be created I think the idea of adding a help "?" icon with hover over text next to the column header would be a fine solution. I don't know that we do this anywhere yet, but it would be something that could be added and used throughout Horizon where needed. I think simply adding the "?" icon would not clutter things too much.

My thoughts,
Liz

[Julie Pichon (jpichon)]

The term comes from Nova, adding them to the bug. I added a task on the docs because this is where I check when I don't understand terminology (e.g. the link in comment #3 has explanations for host usage statistics, but not for instance usage). Feel free to mark it as Invalid if you don't think it's appropriate in this case though! I do agree we need to do something in Horizon as well.

[Cindy Lu (clu-m)]

Created this bug: https://bugs.launchpad.net/horizon/+bug/1381633 based on Liz's suggestion.

What should the help text be for "Disk GB Hours"?

[Cindy Lu (clu-m)]

asked in nova irc, they say kWh

[OpenStack Infra (hudson-openstack)]

Fix proposed to branch: master
Review: https://review.openstack.org/130670

[Thiago Paiva Brito (outbrito)]

Got it: "Disk GB Hours" is a metric related to accounting. e.g. If you have 6 "Disk GB Hours", it means that you could have used 2 GB * 3 Hours.

[Cindy Lu (clu-m)]

Thanks thiagop

[OpenStack Infra (hudson-openstack)]

Reviewed: https://review.openstack.org/130670
Committed: https://git.openstack.org/cgit/openstack/horizon/commit/?id=13f56fc1bc4958679a43dcba3a5520bd0a1c1862
Submitter: Jenkins
Branch: master

commit 13f56fc1bc4958679a43dcba3a5520bd0a1c1862
Author: Cindy Lu <email address hidden>
Date: Thu Oct 23 18:38:35 2014 -0700

    Clarify meaning of "Disk GB Hours" column

    Admin > Overview Usage table has a column called "Disk GB Hours".
    The meaning of this column is unclear.

    Co-Authored-By: Thiago Paiva <email address hidden>

    Change-Id: I17e4a3ce60c66804e98a18c33261881ea10964b8
    Closes-Bug: #1267362

[Tom Fifield (fifieldt)]

As per comment #8, this isn't something that should be fixed in documentation - removing the reference to manuals.