Planning configuration and templates export/import in RHQ

posted on 30 Mar 2011
rhq

We are currently starting to think about what would it take to implement exporting and importing various "configuration" elements including metric and alert templates, server configuration, dynagroup definitions, users & roles and possibly other "entities" between different RHQ installations.

We were asked for this functionality a couple of times in the past and now has come the time when we’d like to take a stab at it. But for that to be truly useful, we need user feedback. If you have some strong opinions about what parts of the RHQ server’s "configuration" (which in essence is everything but the inventory) should be exportable, please shout now. You can leave your feedback here or send a message to either of our mailing lists (rhq-devel, rhq-users) or even post a message to our forums.

I’ve started a wiki page about the subject if you want to know what our current thinking about all this is. Since this is in a very early stage of planning, just about everything is up to debate. To start off the discussion, I’d like to answer the following questions:

  1. What parts of RHQ would you like to sync between RHQ servers?

    • server configuration

    • users

    • roles

    • metric templates

    • alert templates

    • content sources

    • repos

    • packages

    • dyna groups

    • plugins

    • configuration, connection settings of a resource

    • metric schedules of a resource

    • alert definitions of a resource

  2. How granular should the export be?

    • all or nothing - i.e. "true" sync

    • per "subsystem" (i.e. all users&roles, all templates, content sources &repos & packages, …​)

    • pick and choose individual entities

  3. How segmented should the export be?

    • lump different entity types together in one export file

    • export per "subsystem"

  4. When should the import be run?

    • during RHQ server installation

    • any time

If you want to shape the future of RHQ, now’s the time! ;-)