Projects

Updated July 05, 2022 06:22

1. Introduction

A Project in ZedControl is the organization/grouping of various assets under an Enterprise. One way to think of Projects is a group of edge nodes tagged with a similar tag. A 'Default Project' is automatically created along with your Enterprise by default. You can create different projects based on your business segmentation, functional or geographical segmentation, or any of your business logic.

It is advisable to have symmetrical (same brand, model, and hardware configurations) edge nodes in one Project to better manage assets and app instances. However, it is not mandatory to do so.

There are two types of projects: 'Regular' and specific projects like 'Azure.' Azure projects are specially built with Azure-specific features.

The Project requires standard object-level attributes like the name–has to be unique, the title–can be changed later, and depending on the type of Project, other project-related attributes are configurable.

1.1. List View

After you log in to ZedControl:

Step 1 > Click on the Administration () icon.

Step 2 > Click on 'Projects'.

Step 3 > Click on the expand () icon to view the summary panel.

Summary Panel shows the total number of projects based on the 'Project Status' donut view. You can hover around this donut to get the status of each Project present in your Enterprise.

1.2. Detail View

Step 1 > Click on one of the projects in the list view to show the detailed view of the same.

Step 2 > A temporary tab () is created, navigating you to the detailed view of the selected Project.

2. Policies

Some policies govern the behavior of a project. The following are the policies that are common for any Project:

Enforce edge node Attestation–See Remote Attestation Overview for more details.
Network Instance Policy–if selected and defined, the network instance(s) should be automatically deployed to all edge nodes used by edge application(s) part of a particular project.
Edge App Policy–if selected and defined, this policy will be applied to all the edge nodes that are part of this Project. If a new edge node is added to this Project, the 'Edge App Policy' will occur.

For the specific type of projects, there will be specific types of policies. For Azure type of projects, click here.
.

3. Operations Using ZedUI

3.1. Create

The create operation can be performed in the Projects list view only. After you log in to ZedControl, create a Project using the following steps:

Step 1 > Click on the Add () icon

Step 2 > Populate the input field values for the 'Details' section, as instructed in the table.

Step 3 > Populate the input field values for the 'Policies' section, as instructed in the table.

Step 4 > Click on the 'Add' button.

Details section

Define the basic identification details of the Project.

Input Field	Value
Name(*)	This is unique across the Enterprise and cannot be changed.
Title(*)	This is user-defined and can be changed.
Description	A detailed explanation of what the Project is used for. Not mandatory.
Profile	You will need to select 'Cloud Profile' using the dropdown menu. Select 'Regular' if you want the Project to be regular. Select 'Azure' if you want to make this an Azure Project. (If you are already using Azure to manage the data on the cloud, we have a simple Azure integration option that starts with selecting the 'Cloud Profile' as Azure).

Note: The following sections have details for the 'Regular' type of cloud profile. Click here for more information on Azure Projects.

Policies section

The status of projects depends upon the status of the attached policies.

Input Field	Value
Enforce Edge Node Attestation	The checkbox needs to be checked to enforce the edge node attestation.
Edge App Policy	The checkbox needs to be checked to enable the automatic deployment of a particular edge application. Select an appropriate edge application(s) from the dropdown that should be automatically deployed to all edge nodes which are a part of the project being created.

Note: For Azure and regular projects, if an edge application is deployed using the edge app policy, the application gets deleted once the edge node is moved from one Project to another.

Step 5 > When you click on the 'Add' button, a toast message appears as shown below:

Project: New_Project has been added.

Step 6 > You can see that the new Project is added in the Projects list view below.

The colored dot indicates the status to the left of the Project name. The colored dots with the status is as represented in the table:

Legends	Description
Active	The Project is ready to use.
Inactive	The Project is not ready to use.
Archived	Status not used currently.
Unknown	The project status is not known.
Initialized	The project status shows this status until the policy is created.
Error	Status not used currently.

The Project is created successfully!

3.2. Read

The read operation can be performed in the Project detail view only. After you log in to ZedControl, click on the Administration (

) icon and select 'Projects' to go to the list of already available projects. Click on any of the projects in the list view to show the detailed view of the same.

The read view shows the 'Info' and 'Events' sections.

Info

a) Details

Refer to the tables under the create operation for information on the field values and their descriptions.

b) Policies

Refer to the tables under the create operation for information on the field values and their descriptions.

Events

a) Info

Lists all the events that occurred, sorted with date and time, in a table. You can see details based on the type of severity, the source from where a particular event is generated, the edge node, and related Edge Application Instances on which the event has occurred, along with descriptions, in different tabs.

b) Summary

The event summary can be viewed by clicking on the expand () icon. You can see details of the change in state, the severity type, debug info, etc.

3.3. Update

The update/edit operation can only be performed in the Project detail view. After you log in to ZedControl, click on the Administration (

) icon and select 'Projects' to go to the list of already available projects. Click on any of the projects in the list view to show the detailed view of the same.

The update/edit view shows only the 'Info' section.

Basic Info

Update/edit a Project using the following steps:

Step 1 > Click on the Edit () icon.

The 'Info' section allows you to update/edit most of the fields. Refer to the tables under the create operation for information on the editable field values and their descriptions.

Step 2 > Update the editable fields of the 'Details' section. Refer to the tables under the create operation for information on the editable field values and their descriptions.

Step 3 > In the policies section, check the 'Enforce Edge Node Attestation' checkbox if needed.

Step 4 > Click on 'Submit' button.

Step 5 > When you click on the 'Submit' button, a toast message announcing the successful submission of the Project appears below:

Project: New_Project has been updated.

The Project is updated successfully!

3.4. Delete

The delete operation can be performed in both the Project list view and detail view. After you log in to ZedControl, if you no longer require the Project, you could delete it using the following steps:

Step 1 > Click on the checkboxes of the Projects list on which the required operation needs to be performed.

Step 2 > Click on the More () icon on the top right corner.

Step 3 > From the dropdown, select 'Delete'.

Step 4 > Click the 'Confirm' button on the modal dialogue which appears as below:

Deleting these 3 Project(s) will permanently remove the data bout these Project (s) from management platform.

Note: There is no way to reclaim the data, after the delete operation is performed.

Step 5 > When you click on the 'Confirm' button, a toast message announcing the successful submission of the delete request of the projects appears.

3 Projects were successfully deleted.

The selected projects are deleted successfully!

4. Operations Using zCLI

To login to ZedControl through zCLI, see here.

4.1. Create

You can create a Project using the following command:

zcli> zcli project create <name> [--title=<title>] [--description=<description>] [--policy-config=<type:config-path>...]

4.2. Read (Show)

You can use the following command to see the created Project details:

zcli> zcli project show [[[<name> | --uuid=<uuid>] [--detail]] | [--name-pattern=<name-pattern>]]

For example, the show command for Project displays the following output:

zcli> zcli project show

Project Title Description State

------------ ---------------- --------------------- --------

test-project2 test-project2 test-project2 TAG_STATE_ACTIVE

Project_100 Project_100 Default Project TAG_STATE_ACTIVE

test-project1 test-project1 test-project1 TAG_STATE_ACTIVE

default-project default-project Default Project TAG_STATE_ACTIVE

test-project test-project test-project TAG_STATE_ACTIVE

Total 5 Active 5

zcli>

4.3. Update (Edit)

You can update a Project using the following command:

zcli> zcli project update <name> [--title=<title>] [--description=<description>] [--config=<key:value>...] [--policy-config=<type:config-path...>]

4.4. Delete

You can delete a Project using the following command:

zcli> zcli project delete <name> [-f]

Note: -f is to forcefully make the delete request to the ZedControl, without prompting the user.

Projects operations are successfully executed!