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+..
+ This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported
+ License.
+
+ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/legalcode
+
+========================
+Vitrage Alarm Counts API
+========================
+
+Extend the Vitrage REST API to support a GET of the Active Alarm Counts, for
+each alarm severity level, in Vitrage.
+
+
+Problem description
+===================
+Provide REST API access to the Vitrage Active Alarm Counts in support of the
+Horizon blueprint, "Vitrage Alarm Banner in Top Navbar".
+
+
+Proposed change
+===============
+Support the following REST API to Vitrage for calculating and returning
+the Active Alarm Counts for each alarm severity level::
+
+	GET /v1/alarm/count
+
+	Headers
+		X-Auth-Token (string, required) - Keystone auth token
+		Accept (string) - application/json
+
+	Path Parameters
+		None.
+
+	Query Parameters
+		None.
+
+	Request Body
+		all_tenants - (boolean, optional) shows the alarm counts
+                              summed across all tenants (in case the user
+			      has the permissions).
+
+	Request Examples
+		GET /v1/alarm/count HTTP/1.1
+		Host: 135.248.19.18:8999
+		X-Auth-Token: 2b8882ba2ec44295bf300aecb2caa4f7
+		Accept: application/json
+
+	Response Status code
+		200 - OK
+
+	Response Body
+		Returns a JSON object containing the alarm counts for the
+		different alarm severities.
+
+	Response Examples
+		{
+		  "critical_alarm_count": 1,
+		  "major_alarm_count": 0,
+		  "minor_alarm_count": 1,
+		  "warning_alarm_count": 3
+		}
+
+NOTE: The vitrage CLI and client will be updated for this new API.
+e.g. "vitrage alarm count"
+
+
+
+Alternatives
+------------
+For performance reasons, maintain the Active Alarm Counts in Vitrage Entity
+Graph, and just return these counts when the REST API command is received.
+
+Although decided against this due to:
+
+- keeping a counter, in addition to the graph, might be buggy (multi threading
+  issues etc.),
+- calculating the counter means traversing once all of the vertices in the graph,
+  get all alarms, and count. It shouldn't be too expensive, it's just like
+  'get alarms' api,
+- since the result of this api is used for ui query (and not for notification or
+  corrective actions for example), the performance is not that critical.
+
+Data model impact
+-----------------
+None
+
+REST API impact
+---------------
+Extending REST API with new GET /v1/alarm/count API.
+
+Versioning impact
+-----------------
+None ... just extending API, no changes.
+
+Other end user impact
+---------------------
+None
+
+Deployer impact
+---------------
+None
+
+Developer impact
+----------------
+None
+
+Horizon impact
+--------------
+Horizon will use this API to populate the counts in its new "Vitrage
+Alarm Banner" in its Top Navbar; a proposed Horizon blueprint.
+
+
+
+Implementation
+==============
+
+Assignee(s)
+-----------
+Primary assignee:
+  gwaines
+
+Other contributors:
+  None
+
+Work Items
+----------
+- Implement new REST API in Vitrage API:  GET /v1/alarm/count API,
+  to calculate and return the Vitrage Active Alarm Counts for each
+  alarm severity level,
+- Update Vitrage client for new API
+- Add the new "vitrage alarm count" CLI command
+
+
+Dependencies
+============
+None
+
+
+Testing
+=======
+The changes shall be covered by new unit test and tempest test.
+
+
+Documentation Impact
+====================
+Update to Vitrage API Documentation; i.e. the new API will be added under
+https://github.com/openstack/vitrage/blob/master/doc/source/vitrage-api.rst
+
+
+References
+==========
+None.
+