How to use policies?

[pwl]

How can/should we use policies in workflows?

Are there any existing examples of their use around in the posted docs ?

p

[hill]

Hi Peter,

I need to point out that the term "Policies" in WFA has changed to "Templates" with the 1.0 version of WFA.  There were several reasons for this, but the main reason was to make a clear distinction that WFA Templates are different from Service Catalog Policies.

There are some slides in the WFA 1.0 Technical Presentation, but I know they only explain what Templates are.  They don't necessarily show examples of Templates.

As mentioned in a previous communities discussion, the WFA 1.0 Technical Presentation is an initial document and it needs some fine tuning.  I will do some quick edits right now to remove the references to "Policies" since those should have been changed to "Templates".  I will also add a couple of slides to show how to access "Templates" and provide examples.

Please let me know if this helps, or if you have any additional questions.

-Kevin

[hill]

Updates posted to the WFA 1.0 Technical Presentation... specifically for Templates.  Many more udpates are planned.

Hopefully this helps.  If not, please let me know and I'll see what I can do.

-Kevin

[pwl]

thanks kevin, this is a bit clearer; although i'd still like to see/understand how & where they get applied (see my response to yaron, below)

on a slight tangent - i'd like to suggest avoiding "gold","silver","bronze", etc from template names (& policies for that matter):  they're such arbitrary words & leave little scope for nuance or adjustment.

what is "gold" ?  is it performance? is it availability?  is it both?  what if you can get high-enough performance on SATA with flashcache, but it needs to be extremely highly-available?  is gold a 2hour RTO ? or 4?     how many snapshots should we keep locally? etc etc etc - i'm sure you get what i mean.

i like the templates you show in the presentation: "VolumeForOracle", "ExportForVMWare", etc

at my WFA customer we're proposing services like:  "VMWare datastore for VSI on NFS"; "VMWare datastore for VSI on NFS with local snapshots";  "VMWare datastore for VSI on NFS with remote backup";  etc

so i'd like to take this opportunity to start a movement of "ban the metals"  - let's use more descriptive terms for the policies, templates and services we propose, and show people there's a Better Way to Do It.

[yaronh]

Hi Peter,

We will be releasing 1.0 formally early next week.

It comes with certified content including a (policy) template you can review.

There are 2 use models for templates:

1) Create an object template (Like a gold volume or silver volume), and attach it to volume object
definition to ascertain that all volumes are created based on the template (and, if the template is

modified, changes will propagate to the flows using it)

2) Create an object template for quick start - In case "Policies" are less interesting you can create
a template to attach (And immediately release) to volume definition in order to "paste" values

and save yourself some of the steps in defining that volume.

Hope that helps.

Yaron

[pwl]

thanks yaron

do you have an example of "attaching" a template to an object?

is this done in the workflow, or filter, or somewhere else ?