I would personally shy away from trying to specify multiple error states. My past experience is that this is an endless bucket. Systems fail in lots of ways. Once you start specifying error states you won't stop. --Randy On 4/20/09 6:02 AM, "Michael Richardson" <mcr@sandelman.ca> wrote:
Missing are error states.
For instance, "starting" may well lead to an error state such as "failed to boot". The VM may well be spinning cycles at "Kernel panic", "db>", or "Failure on Drive C, abort,retry,fail". The failed state is important for clients to know, and possibly also for billing.
Another state that I can think of that might be important is network disconnect --- you may have a VM that is ACTIVE, but the networks are disconnected. I'd call this state "STANDBY"
(Or not yet connected). I often do this in my virtualized infrastructure: bring up a VM with a new version of software, on a new IP, with VRRP/CARP configured, but I'm not going to connect it on the live side until it's confirmed to be up, at which point, I enable the networking, and it takes over the virtual IP.
-- Randy Bias, VP Technology Strategy, GoGrid randyb@gogrid.com, (415) 939-8507 [mobile] BLOG: http://neotactics.com/blog, TWITTER: twitter.com/randybias