Background Recently, I have been looking at a number of issues relating to the "first use" / "first impression" use of cloudstack. What to people think of Cloudstack as a new user? What is peoples perception of Cloudstack as a new user ? How easy is it for people to understand cloudstack & its concepts and to get help
One thing I have seen is that CloudStack is inconsistent with what we call VM's/Instances: * In the UI main menu, we say Instances. We then have a very large "Create instance" button. All lifecycle operations are then "Foo Instance" * In various other places in the UI (many text messages, error messages, column headers, for example) we say "VM" * The API uses Instance, VM and Virtual Machine * The documentation, again, uses all 3 terms Now - I know everybody on this list (myself included for the last 10 years) has always used these terms interchangeably - we all KNOW that these are the same things. However, I think it could cause confusion to people seeing Cloudstack for the first time and create negative impressions. Also, there is no consistency when searching documentation - one page uses one term, one the other (and some even use both on the same page) . I don't know of many other pieces of software that use 2/3 different names for their primary functional object My proposal is to move towards having consistency of this naming and would look something like this: 1. Choose the name to use going forwards (more on that later) 2. Undertake a remedial exercise: * Update UI elements to [new name] * Update documentation to [New Name] * Leave Global Settings names alone, but change their description to reflect [New Name] * Leave the API alone - theres no way of getting consistency there without breaking compatibility 3. Encourage contributors to use [new name] in all work going forwards The remedial exercise (hopefully) could be a find/replace (with some manual checking) - I'd be happy to take that on with some help from work colleagues As/when/if we do do Cloudstack 5.0, then look at the API, but IMO this is lower priority as people that's not usdually "first impression" So - first proposal point: any objections to me undertaking this work ? Second point: what to call these things ? It is my view that we should call them Instances. These are my reasons: * Nearly all Cloud computing platforms refer to them as instances (i.e. industry standard) . Yes, it is a VM "behind the scenes", but Instance is an accepted term that is slightly abstracted from VM * Our primary UI already uses Instance ns most prominent places, renaming top level nav and functionality is a step backwards IMO * Today, Cloudstack provides these through VMs , but that could change in the future (please don't read anything into that comment) - instance doesn't tie us to VMs (which is probably why most cloud providers use it) So, my proposal is to bring consistency and use the term Instance >From brief discussions, I know other people favour other terms and may have >objections to the term Instance (despite it having been in use in ACS for many >years) - but happy to take all inputs if people feel this is just wrong. Kind Regards Giles