Vendor and product management

RefStack has implemented a vendor and product registration process so that test results can be associated to products of vendors. The creation and management of vendor and product entities can be done using the RefStack Server UI or RefStack APIs. The following is a quick guide outlining the information related to the creation and management of those entities.

Vendor entity

Any user who has successfully authenticated to the RefStack server can create vendor entities. The minimum required information to create a vendor is the vendor name. Users can update the rest of the vendor related information at a later time.

Vendor admin

Whenever a user creates a vendor, this user will be added as the vendor’s first vendor admin. Subsequently, any admin of the vendor can add additional users to the vendor. In RefStack, the “OpenStack User ID” of users are used as the identities for adding users to vendors. At the time this document is written, RefStack has not implemented user roles, and as such, all users of a vendor are admin users.

Vendor types

There are four types of vendor entities in RefStack:

• Foundation:

  This is a special entity representing the OpenStack Foundation. Users belong to this entity are the Foundation admins. Foundation admins have visibility to all vendors and products.

• Private:

  A vendor will always be created with type “private”. Vendors of this type are only visible to their own users and Foundation admins. Vendor users can initiate a registration request to the Foundation to change its type from “private” to “official”.

• Pending

  Once a registration request is submitted, the vendor type will be changed automatically from type “private” to “pending”. Vendors of this type are still only visible to their own users and Foundation admins.

• Official

  Once a vendor registration request is approved by the Foundation. The vendor type will be changed from “pending” to “official”. Official vendors are visible to all RefStack users.

Product entity

Any user who has successfully authenticated to the RefStack server can create product entities. The minimum information needed to create a product entity is as follows:

• Name

  This is the name of the product entity being created.

• Product type:

  Product types are defined by OpenStack as shown on the OpenStack Marketplace ( https://www.openstack.org/marketplace/ ). Currently, there are three types of products, namely: Distro & Appliances, Hosted Private Clouds and Public Clouds.

• Vendor

  This is the vendor which owns the product. A default vendor will be created for the user if no vendor entity exists for this user.

Whenever a product is created, by default, it is a private product and is only visible to its vendor users. Vendor users can make a product publicly visible as needed later. However, only products that are owned by official vendors can be made publicly visible.

Product version

A default version is created whenever a product is created. The name of the default version is blank. The default version is used for products that have no version. Users can add new product versions to the product as needed.