Howdy everyone,
I’m excited to share that the first public beta of Hye Ararat, a new web interface purpose-built for Incus, is now available.
Hye Ararat provides a clean, intuitive dashboard for managing your Incus deployment, and is designed to maintain the power tools one building a hyperscaler would need, while maintaining a low enough learning curve for someone running an iMac in their closet (my dad) to operate.
Too often, these clients just dump API data into a complex interface that is difficult to digest, or hide options for the sake of simplification. Ararat is built from the principle that a UI that services the needs of every type of member of this community can be built, if enough thought and effort is put into the primitives.
The most beautiful benefit about a web interface vs. a CLI, is that the way information is displayed can be completely specific to what you’re looking at and what you need. I can’t help but feel that the core principles of UI and UX, and the mission of building a path for anyone of any background to be able to access Incus, was lost in the current implementation.
Today, I’m thrilled to introduce the first beta release of this new interface. Currently, beyond the necessary core (authentication, communication, etc.) it contains almost complete implementations for:
- Instances
- Operations
- Projects
Development on the remaining primitives will begin shortly, however, I believe the best path forward is building this with the community. The community-driven nature of Incus’s development is what has kept Incus strong, ahead of the curve, and always able to service its users needs. The web interface would benefit so much given the same community-driven environment, so if the interest is there, I would love for this post to be the catalyst towards building that future.
I’ve set a roadmap with full coverage with the other primitives for July 24th. The decisions made at this early stage are the ones that last the longest, and this is the time in which they are the easiest to change. I would much rather make those decisions with the community than in front of it.
So please, try it, break it, complain about it, tell us what you hate, tell us what you like, tell us what feels wrong, tell us what feels right. Your feedback is the most valuable signal to where this is going to go. Everything is fair game, and all feedback will help build this to better serve the community.
Here’s the GitHub Repository:
Some screenshots (we love visuals! 
):
