New 'Explore MAAS' document

en/intro-explore.md

@@ -0,0 +1,275 @@
+Title: Explore MAAS
+table_of_contents: True
+
+# Explore MAAS
+
+MAAS is designed to scale. But it can be explored effectively with virtual
+machines, rather than real hardware, enabling you to experiment with its
+functions and processes without committing real network and hardware resources.
+
+The following overview covers a typical virtual machine installation, with a
+focus on the web-based user-interface. It's a non-exhaustive introduction, but
+does provide a typical working outline of how MAAS is used and what it's
+capable of. The same and more advanced configuration can be accomplished from
+both the [CLI][manage-cli] and the [REST API][rest-api]. 
+
+The [User Manual][installation] offers a more comprehensive guide to
+installation, configuration and usage.
+
+![web UI login][img__login]
+
+
+## Installation
+
+For best results, we'd recommend testing MAAS with [libvirt][libvirt] and its
+KVM/QEMU hypervisor driver. This combination is used by default in Ubuntu and
+the majority of Linux distributions; it's also [easy to install][libvirt-install]
+and natively supported by MAAS for power management duties.
+
+We'd also recommend installing the GUI `virt-manager` to ease configuration,
+but *libvirt* can also be operated from the command line.
+
+!!! Note:
+    MAAS will also work within a Linux virtual machine running from Oracle's
+    [VirtualBox][virtualbox], which may be useful if you want to test MAAS from
+    a Microsoft Windows or macOS environment. 
+
+Assuming a base installation of [Ubuntu 16.04 LTS(Xenial) server][xenial-link]
+running on a fresh *libvirt* instance or real hardware, matching the 
+[minimum requirements][requirements], MAAS is installed with the following
+command:
+
+```bash
+sudo snap install --devmode --stable maas
+```
+
+While testing, both the *region controller* and the *rack controller* will run
+on this single machine, but you can have multiples of both to scale out MAAS to
+meet your requirements, from just a few machines to hundreds across different
+zones.
+
+To initialise MAAS for a single machine, issue the following command:
+
+```bash
+sudo maas init --mode all
+```
+
+After entering a username and password, web UI is now accessible from the
+configured address from where you can now login with your new credentials.
+
+See [Installation][installation] for further details.
+
+### Welcome to MAAS
+
+After a fresh MAAS installation, the web UI presents a
+[Welcome dashboard][welcome-page] to help set many system-wide options,
+including connectivity, image downloads, and authentication keys.
+
+
+<style>
+table th, table td {
+    background: #f7f7f7;
+    border: 0px solid;
+    padding: 15px 10px;
+}
+
+table.logos {
+    background: #f7f7f7;
+    border: 0px solid;
+    padding: 4px 4px;
+}
+
+table.logos th, table.logos td{
+    align="center";
+    valign="center";
+    border: 8px;
+    border-style: solid;
+    border-color: #ffffff;
+  }
+</style>
+
+<table width="500" border-width="0px" cellpadding="5">
+
+<tr>
+
+<td align="center" valign="center" border-width="0px" >
+<img src="../media/intro-explore__2.3_welcome1.png" alt="First page of Welcome settings" />
+<br />
+<i>Welcome</i> sets global values...
+</td>
+
+<td align="center" valign="center" border-width="0px">
+<img src="../media/intro-explore__2.3_welcome2.png" alt="Second page of Welcome settings" />
+<br />
+...before the MAAS <i>Dashboard</i>
+</td>
+
+</tr>
+
+</table>
+
+With this complete, you'll see *MAAS has been successfully set up*. Click 'Go
+to the Dashboard' to proceed (although you may need to wait a few moments for
+your selected images to sync locally).
+
+
+## Networking
+
+The *Dashboard* landing page, manually opened with a click of the MAAS logo,
+lists non-registered devices detected automatically on the network.  This
+[network discovery][device-disco] enables you to easily add or map devices
+already connected to your network that you may not necessarily want managed by
+MAAS.
+
+![network discovery][img__disco]
+
+Note:
+    Network discovery can be disabled at any time from the button on the
+    *Dashboard* view.
+
+### Spaces, fabrics, zones and subnets
+
+![MAAS network concepts][img__netconcepts]
+
+To accommodate rack installation within complex network topologies and the
+requirements of flexible machine deployment, MAAS offers comprehensive control
+over networking.
+
+Alongside the management of its own domain, configured via the DNS page of the
+web UI, MAAS can isolate machine deployment across spaces, zones, fabrics and
+subnets.
+
+![MAAS subnet configuration][img__subnets]
+
+Network settings are spread across several web UI configuration pages. The
+*Zones* page, for example, enables you to see how many machines, devices and
+controllers are using a zone as well as making it easy to add a zone. The
+*Subnets* page provides access to fabric, VLAN, subnet and spaces
+configuration.
+
+
+## Deploy hardware
+
+MAAS-managed machines are listed, and operated on, from the
+[Nodes][node-overview] page, making this page one of the most important in the
+MAAS web UI.
+
+If you're testing MAAS using virtual machines, creating a new instance and
+booting it on the same network will be enough for it to appear here. This is
+because new machines are added automatically when they first connect to your
+network.  Alternatively, the 'Add hardware' menu lets you add machines via
+their MAC address manually.
+
+After power and interfaces are configured, machines need to be commissioned to
+retrieve CPU, memory and storage information. From this point, they can be
+acquired, tested, deployed and released as fully fledged members of your MAAS
+cloud.
+
+![Node filter and deployment][img__deploy]
+
+A powerful filtering mechanism on the left, based around [tags][tags] and hardware
+characteristics, is used to list only those machines you're interested in, from
+where one or more can be selected and operated on.
+
+
+### Images
+
+When it comes to running applications, MAAS can deploy any supported variant of
+Ubuntu, including LTS and non-LTS versions for x86, ARM, PPC and s390x systems.
+Both CentOS 7 and CentOS 6 can also be deployed to your machines, as can
+Windows, RHEL and SUSE images with [Ubuntu Advantage][ubuntu-advantage].
+
+![Image import overview][img__images]
+
+
+### Pods
+
+Even greater control over your hardware comes from the use of *pods* to group
+either virtual machines (using libvirt and KVM) or physical systems with Intel
+RSD into an *abstraction of resources*. This allows for
+[composable hardware][composable], where machine requests can be made without
+having a specific machine pre-built.
+
+To add a pod of virtual machines, click the 'Add pod' button on the *Pods* page
+of the web UI, give the pod a name and select *Virsh* as the pod type, entering
+the address for the libvirt controlled pool below. 
+
+See [KVM guest nodes][kvm-nodes] for further details on on adding *libvirt*
+virtual machines to MAAS.
+
+After a pod has been created, hardware can be *composed* by selecting the pod
+and selecting 'Compose' from the action menu. From the pane that appears, you
+can select exactly how you'd like your composed hardware to be configured,
+including the number of cores, CPU speed, RAM and combined storage. Click
+'Compose machine' and MAAS will combine resources to create a new single
+entity that can be used just like any other machine.
+
+<style>
+table th, table td {
+    background: #f7f7f7;
+    border: 0px solid;
+    padding: 15px 10px;
+}
+
+table.logos {
+    background: #f7f7f7;
+    border: 0px solid;
+    padding: 4px 4px;
+}
+
+table.logos th, table.logos td{
+    align="center";
+    valign="center";
+    border: 8px;
+    border-style: solid;
+    border-color: #ffffff;
+  }
+</style>
+
+<table width="500" border-width="0px" cellpadding="5">
+
+<tr>
+
+<td align="center" valign="center" border-width="0px" >
+<img src="../media/intro-explore__2.3_pods1.png" alt="Login to JAAS" />
+<br />
+Pods abstract multiple resources...
+</td>
+
+<td align="center" valign="center" border-width="0px">
+<img src="../media/intro-explore__2.3_pods2.png" alt="Login to JAAS" />
+<br />
+...into pools of composable hardware
+</td>
+
+</tr>
+
+</table>
+
+
+<!-- IMAGES -->
+
+[img__login]: ../media/intro-explore__2.3_login.png
+[img__disco]: ../media/intro-explore__2.3_disco.png
+[img__netconcepts]: ../media/intro-concepts__fabrics-spaces.png
+[img__subnets]: ../media/intro-explore__2.3_subnets.png
+[img__images]: ../media/intro-explore__2.3_images.png
+[img__deploy]: ../media/intro-explore__2.3_deploy.png
+
+<!-- LINKS -->
+
+[libvirt]: https://libvirt.org/drvqemu.html
+[virtualbox]: https://www.virtualbox.org
+[xenial-link]: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/XenialXerus/ReleaseNotes
+[libvirt-install]: https://help.ubuntu.com/lts/serverguide/libvirt.html
+[ubuntu-advantage]: https://www.ubuntu.com/support
+[requirements]: intro-requirements.md#test-environment
+[welcome-page]: installconfig-webui-conf-journey.md
+[device-disco]: installconfig-network-dev-discovery.md
+[node-overview]: nodes-overview.md
+[tags]: nodes-tags.md
+[composable]: nodes-comp-hw.md
+[kvm-nodes]: nodes-add.md#kvm-guest-nodes
+[rest-api]: api.md
+[manage-cli]: manage-cli.md
+[installation]: installconfig-install.md

en/metadata.yaml

@@ -7,6 +7,9 @@ navigation:
       - title: About MAAS
         location: index.md
 
+      - title: Explore MAAS
+        location: intro-explore.md
+
       - title: Requirements
         location: intro-requirements.md