I would like to propose to introduce API (Admin only, 4.4) that returns user data to the admin. Current UserData behavior:
* userData is passed to the deployVm/updateVm call * its stored in CS db and on the VR * the only one way to retrieve the data, is to request it from the user vm inside the network by sending http request to the Virtual Router. We've adopted this model from Amazon EC2 APIs. But along the way I've noticed that some third party integrators needed to read UserData by Admin to get the information about all vms in the system/network. To solve the problem, people were using different kinds of workarounds - db scripts to read userData from cloudstack DB, or writing CS API extensions: https://github.com/jasonhancock/cloudstack-api-extension. So the API I'm proposing, will let you to retrieve User Data via Admin API. It will be available to Root admin only. If anyone has any objection, or see the flaws in the proposal, please signal. -Alena.
