Managing with the IBM Cloud Manager - Dashboard

Use this information if you are managing your cloud using the IBM Cloud Manager - Dashboard, included with IBM Cloud Manager with OpenStack. It is based on OpenStack Horizon. The IBM Cloud Manager - Dashboard is intended for administrator use only.

If you choose, you can use the IBM Cloud Manager - Dashboard to manage your cloud environment. After you install and deploy IBM Cloud Manager with OpenStack, access the dashboard.
  • For the high availability (HA) controller +n compute topology: From a supported browser, type https://x.x.x.x/, where x.x.x.x is the virtual IP address for the controller + n compute with HA topology.
  • For all other topologies, including controller +n compute (no HA): From a supported browser, type https://controller.fqdn.com/, where controller.fqdn.com is the fully qualified domain name of the controller node in your topology.

You can log in using the admin user with the password that you customized for your deployment. If you deployed the Minimal topology, then the default password is admin. For more information about users and passwords, see the User names and passwords and Data bags topics.

You can configure some of the properties in the dashboard as well. For specific configuration options, see Configuring IBM Cloud Manager - Dashboard properties.

As a cloud administrator, you can use the IBM Cloud Manager - Dashboard to create and manage projects, users, images, and flavors. You can also set quotas and create and manage services. The following table highlights some of the key capabilities that are added by the IBM Cloud Manager - Dashboard.
Important: If you are planning to have users working with the IBM Cloud Manager - Self Service interface, note that you might need to restart IBM Cloud Manager - Self Service in order to synchronize any user, project membership, or out of band changes that you perform using other interfaces, such as Keystone or Horizon.
Table 1. Key functions and descriptions
Function Tab Description
Create and manage approval policies Admin --> System --> Defaults
Note: You can override default settings by editing a project or region specifically. For example, access Identity -->projects to edit the project settings.
 You can enable approval policy support by specifying the operations that require approval. If approval policies are enabled, the requested operation is held until the approval request is processed by the administrator.

This approval requirement ensures that administrators control the instance process and provides an audit trail of the requester and approver roles.

From a user standpoint, the approval lifecycle behaves similar to the following:
  • Users can see only requests that they initiate.
  • Users are unable to view any requests against an instance in the public project that they did not originate. Instances indicate that they are in a Pending state, but users cannot see the outstanding requests that are initiated by other users against that instance.

You can set and manage approval policies at the project level or region level.
Create and manage expiration policies Admin --> System --> Defaults
Note: You can override default settings by editing a project or region specifically. For example, access Identity -->projects to edit the project's expiration policies.
 Expiration policies require users to set an expiration period that specifies the maximum length of the instance lease and determine the lifecycle of expired instances.

You can set a default expiration policy for a region or for a project. Expiration policies set for a project override the expiration policies set for a region. After an expiration policy is set, you must set an expiration date whenever deploying an image from that region or project. However, the administrative user can set a date with no limitations.

If you are deploying an image from a region or project that does not have an expiration policy set, you can choose whether to set an expiration date.

The user who deployed the instance receives an email notification when the instance is about to expire. The user can extend the lease if extensions are enabled.

After the instance expires, it is stopped. The instance can be automatically deleted after a limited time, which is specified by the grace period. If no grace period is specified, the instance is deleted immediately. This setting applies regardless of whether the instance expiration maximum is set.

Create, configure, and manage image templates Admin --> System --> Image Templates On the Image Template page, you can manage, create, and configure the image templates that are available to be launched with an instance. An image template replaces the concept of copying an image and image configuration from previous releases.

Each image template has a status that is associated with it. If the status is OK, then the image template is ready to be launched with an instance.

To make image templates available to IBM Cloud Manager - Self Service users, you must use the Create image template action. For example, Admin-->Image template-->Create image template.

You can delete an image template without deleting the image and vice versa. They are independent.

To view the properties of an image template, click its name. If the list of image templates does not contain the one that you want, ensure that the filters are set correctly.

When configuring an image template, you change the deployment target, network adapters, flavors, security, virtual machine configuration, and more.
Create images, update metadata, update configuration strategy, manage images Admin --> System --> Images

Use Edit Image to update image properties and the configuration strategy.

The configuration strategy allows you to use either an OVF or Sysprep template to provide configuration properties to the image when it is started. Use this section to enter the source property names to map to the target properties from the template. The source properties can be OpenStack provided properties or come from the server metadata. You can choose to load an OVF template file, an Unattend XML template file, or a configuration strategy JSON file.
View and manage user requests, such as approvals Requests --> Request When a user deploys an image or initiates an action that requires approval from an administrator, a request is created and submitted to an administrator for approval. The status is set to Pending until the administrator handles the approval request.

You can set which actions require administrator approval by using the Approval policies function.

Note: There is a badge on the Requests menu that displays the number of pending requests. If it displays "!", the backend sce API is not accessible. You must check if the sce service is running. For more information, see Managing IBM Cloud Manager with OpenStack services.
Note:
  • You must restart IBM Cloud Manager - Self Service in order to synchronize any users that you created or project membership changes that you performed using Keystone.
  • Email notifications for certain events (such as expiration dates) are only sent to users, if they included an email address and requested notifications in their user account profile. For more information about user accounts, see Setting up your user account.
  • Create Image using IBM Cloud Manager - Dashboard is not supported by the PowerVC driver. All images must be synchronized from PowerVC to the hosting OpenStack environment by the PowerVC driver.

The capabilities that are described are only a subset available from the IBM Cloud Manager - Dashboard. For more information about the OpenStack dashboard and complete list of tasks, see the OpenStack Admin User Guide.