A Unified UI

Adjusting the mindset

Increased focus on maintenance
Lets decouple our users' duties:
- BAU maintenance
- Development
- Business reporting
- System configuration
- (Consumer: Self-service portal)

A new mental model and structure

With support for "domains"

Overview

Focus on "looking after computing resources"
- Done by exposing via a hierarchy
- "Devops best practices, in a box"
Development activities via templates for provisioning, drift, and complex actions
BAU activities via actions and template updates
Drift activities via selectable entity comparisons, snapshots within hosts, and top level reports

The hierarchy

Environment

Asset

Provider

Host

Uses

Influences

Facilitate a bottom up view for assets and hosts.

Informational

"Semantic"

"Physical"

The look and feel is not a focus of the wireframes (read: they look bad, I know)

Visual overview

Template definition updates are done offline

Clone or download template. Downloaded tarball/zip contains a working directory with .git/:

 {{template_name}}/
       .git/...
       metadata.yml
       properties.yml
       actions.yml
       composition.yml
       transforms.yml
       compliance.yml
       testing.yml
       states.yml
       definition/ -- (chef) stuff

Equivalent of running `mintpress-cli init-template`.

Action

Instance card

Scripting actions

Assets, bottom up

Environment actions for flexibility, and complex (assets)

Update config: SSL certificates

Apply to env to roll out

Apply to env to roll out: manual

Edit config

Rollout can be done piecemeal

Deploying a change

(First time steps)

Offline dev flow

git clone ...
vim ...
mintpress-cli test ...
git commit ...
git tag ...
git push ...

Make the OS Release a prop

- <<: *instances
- key: os_release
  label: RHEL release
  default: 7.0
  build_property: true
  attribute:
    type: number
    min: 5
    max: 7
    step: 0.1
    required: true

# git add properties.yml
# git commit -m 'Add os_release prop.'
# git tag v1.2 # optional -m
# git push
> Changes verified.
> OSI template v1.2 now available in non-production environments.
  Access https://mintpress.../templates/osi to alter this template's availability.
> 4 assets could be updated to this release.
  Run `./mintpress-cli apply osi:v1.2 all --canary [--no-confirm]` to apply this
  version to all available instances.

# git clone https://.../osi.git && cd osi
# vim properties.yml

Types of change

Patch version
New config option
Implementation updates

Add asset

Add Env

Configure env

Transforms

Creating a new transform

Transforms are part of the template

# Override a common property scaleout with a default value of 3 (instead of the usual value)
- <<: *scaleout
  overrides:
    input:
      - key: *scaleout_count_key
        default: 3
- key: path_prefix
  label: Install path prefix
  type: javascript
  target: !!js/function |-
    function getInstallationList(json) {
      return json.installationList
    }
  implementation: !!js/function |-
    function setName(inJson) {
      var prefix = input['prefix'].endsWith('/') ? inputs['prefix'] : (inputs['prefix'] + '/')
      for(var inst in inJson) {
        inst.installPath = prefix + inst.installPath
      }
    }
  input:
    - key: prefix
      label: Prefix
      default: ''
      attribute:
        type: string
        maxlength: 10
        required: true

# git ...

# git clone https://.../osi.git && cd osi
# vim transforms.yml

mintpress-cli to facilitate dev and testing

function getMulti(json) {
 // builtin functions:
 //   - walk: traverse every node
 //   - onMatch: indicate match to process
 walk(json, function(n) {
   if(new RegExp('x', 'i').test(n.name)) {
     onMatch(n)
   }
 })
}

{
 "name": "x",
 "product": "x"
 "installPath": "/opt"
}
---
{
 "name": "x",
 "product": "y",
 "installPath": "/var"
}

{
 "toInstall": [
  {
    "name": "x",
    "product": "x"
    "installPath": "/opt"
  },
  {
    "name": "x",
    "product": "y",
    "installPath": "/var"
  }
]

function setMulti(json) {
  json.name = json.name.toUpperCase()
}

{
  "name": "X",
  "product": "x"
  "installPath": "/opt"
}
---
{
  "name": "X",
  "product": "y",
  "installPath": "/var"
}

{
  "name": "x",
  "product": "x"
  "installPath": "/opt"
}
---
{
  "name": "x",
  "product": "y",
  "installPath": "/var"
}

Bikeshed example

Create template

Making definition updates is done offline