Show more info on Network Interfaces UI

Problem/Justification
Make the Network → Interfaces UI easier to use / more informatative

  • Show the parent/child heirachy of Interfaces in the layout e.g. an expanding tree to see child and grandchild interfaces the same way datasets UI expands
  • Show a list of dependent VM’s/containers as info under an interface or a network map of how the interfaces from containers/VM’s connect to the TrueNAS interfaces.
  • When viewing a physical interface it would be valuable to see the MAC address and hardware/driver info associated
  • It would be great to see some basic network interface stats when viewing an interface with a link to netdata to see more detail
  • On the network summary it currently shows interface name and aliases. It would save going into edit to see the description, VLAN ID, and other frequently used information

Impact
Makes the UI that little bit easier to use, and a little more intuitive.
Down side is potential information over-load or confusion but it can be done incrementally.

User Story
As a TrueNAS administrator I want to be able to quickly understand the network configuration and not have to google how it implements physical/LAGG/VLAN/bridges to get VM’s and containers working

1 Like

I’m out of votes right now, but I really like the idea of making the network setup easier to see visually.

Proxmox doesn’t present a tree view, but it does present an information dense list that makes it very clear at a glance what virtual interfaces and VLANs exist, and what real hardware they’re on top of. (IP addresses redacted).

2 Likes

Now tht you mention it. These 5 points would be valuable, especially for less experienced user or people not administering TrueNAS daily.

That’s clearly my favorit:

1 Like

Re-reading my original message I thought I could explain a couple of these better.

To better describe parent/child - I have a 1 GB interface (out of band management) and two 10 GB interfaces (SMB, containers, VM’s). Attached to those physical interfaces I have VLAN interfaces as children, and bridges as grandchild interfaces.
I then attach VM’s etc to those bridges.

For this I was imagining the extra fields of info could be like the extra columns option on the Virtualisation UI where you can choose which info matters to you e.g. I would like to see VLANs but others won’t care.