## Profiles

updated: 2020-10-17 18:54

# Profiles

A profile is an object instantiated from a “profile type” and it is used as the specification for creating a physical object to be managed by Senlin. The “physical” adjective here is used to differentiate such an object from its counterpart, the “logical” object, which is referred to as a node in Senlin.

As the specification for physical object creation, a profile contains almost every piece of information needed for the underlying driver to create an object. After a physical object is created, its UUID will be assigned to the `physical_id` property of a node as reference. When a physical object is deleted, the `physical_id` property will be set to `None`.

Although not required, a profile may reference the node object’s properties when creating a physical object. For example, a profile may use the node’s `index` property value for generating a name for the object; a profile may customize an object’s property based on the `role` property value of a node. It is up to the profile type author and the specific use case how a profile is making use of the properties of a node.

## Profile Properties

A profile object has the following properties:

- `id`: a global unique ID assigned to the object after creation;

- `name`: a string representation of the profile name;

- `type`: a string referencing the profile type used;

- `context`: a map of key-value pairs that contains credentials and/or parameters for authentication with an identity service. When a profile is about to create an object, it will use data stored here to establish a connection to a service;

- `spec`: a map of key-value pairs that contains the specification for object creation. The content of this property is dictated by the corresponding profile type.

- `metadata`: a map of key-value pairs associated with the profile;

- `created_at`: the timestamp when the profile was created;

- `updated_at`: the timestamp when the profile was last updated;

The `spec` property is the most important property for a profile. It is immutable, i.e. the only way to “change” the `spec` property is to create a new profile. By restricting changes to this property, Senlin can do a better job in managing the object configurations.

## Creating A Profile

When creating a profile using the `profile_create` API, a user must provide the `name` and `spec` parameters. All other parameters are optional.

The provided `spec` map will be validated using the validation logic provided by the corresponding profile type. If the validation succeeds, the profile will be created and stored into the database. Senlin engine returns the details of the profile as a dict back to Senlin API and eventually to the requesting user. If the validation fails, Senlin engine returns an error message describing the reason of the failure.

## Listing Profiles

Senlin profiles an API for listing all profiles known to the Senlin engine. When querying the profiles, users can provide any of the following parameters:

- `filters`: a map of key-value pairs to filter profiles, where each key can be one of the following word and the value(s) are for the Senlin engine to match against all profiles.

  - `name`: profile name for matching;

  - `type`: profile type for matching;

  - `metadata`: a string for matching profile metadata.

- `limit`: an integer that specifies the maximum number of records to be returned from the API call;

- `marker`: a string specifying the UUID of the last seen record; only those records that appear after the given value will be returned;

- `sort`: A string to enforce sorting of the results. It accepts a list of known property names of a profile as sorting keys separated by commas. Each sorting key can optionally have either `:asc` or `:desc` appended to the key for controlling the sorting direction.

- `global_project`: A boolean indicating whether profile listing should be done in a tenant-safe way. When this value is specified as False (the default), only profiles from the current project that match the other criteria will be returned. When this value is specified as True, profiles that matching all other criteria would be returned, no matter in which project a profile was created. Only a user with admin privilege is permitted to do a global listing.

If there are profiles matching the query criteria, Senlin API returns a list named `profiles` where each entry is a JSON map containing details about a profile object. Otherwise, an empty list or an error message will be returned depending on whether the query was well formed.

## Getting A Profile

A user can provide one of the following values in attempt to retrieve the details of a specific profile.

- Profile UUID: Query is performed strictly based on the UUID value given. This is the most precise query supported in Senlin.

- Profile name: Senlin allows multiple profiles to have the same name. It is user’s responsibility to avoid name conflicts if needed. Senlin engine will return a message telling users that multiple profiles found matching this name if the provided name cannot uniquely identify a profile.

- short ID: Considering that UUID is a long string not so convenient to input, Senlin supports a short version of UUIDs for query. Senlin engine will use the provided string as a prefix to attempt a matching in the database. When the “ID” is long enough to be unique, the details of the matching profile is returned, or else Senlin will return an error message indicating that multiple profiles were found matching the specified short ID.

## Updating A Profile

Once a profile object is created, a user can request its properties to be updated. Updates to the `name` or `metadata` properties are applied on the specified profile object directly. Changing the `spec` property of a profile object is not permitted.

## Deleting A Profile

A user can provide one of profile UUID, profile name or a short ID of a profile when requesting a profile object to be deleted. Senlin engine will check if there are still any clusters or nodes using the specific profile. Since a profile in use cannot be deleted, if any such clusters or nodes are found, an error message will be returned to user.

updated: 2020-10-17 18:54

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