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To help you detect and address changing demand for resources, the virtual appliance has Monitoring and Control features, which include platform's control features include, monitoring, alerts with notifications, action plans for automation, and vertical and horizontal autoscaling.
- To configure monitoring
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- for a VM, edit the VM and fetch metrics. See VM monitoring and metrics.
- To configure alarms for metrics, including VM metrics, go to Virtual datacenters
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- → Alarms. See Manage cloud alarms
- To configure alerts for alarms, and action plans to automate actions, go to Control → Alerts. See Control View
- To get started scaling out a VM, create a scaling group for the VM, as described below. Then create an action plan to automatically run scaling actions. See Control View
Basic control and scaling concepts
Alarms
An alarm activates when a metric passes a certain threshold. If you imagine a dashboard for your metrics, alarms are like red lights that light up when conditions change, for example, when there is a problem.
Alerts
Alerts enable you to configure notifications or actions for the VMs in a virtual appliance. Alerts are like a worker monitoring a group of alarms; when all the lights for the group are lit up, the alert is activated. Abiquo alerts can trigger action plans.
Action plans
A sequence of actions to perform on a virtual appliance. An action plan is run by a trigger.
Trigger
A trigger is an alert or a schedule that will run the action plan, for example, during times of increased demand.
Scaling group
For horizontal autoscaling, create a scaling group for a VM with rules to define how the platform should scale it out. You can then include scaling operations in an action plan.
Vertical scaling
Vertical scaling means adding more resources to an existing VM, for example, boosting your CPU and or RAM capacity.
Horizontal scaling
Horizontal scaling means deploying more VMs when you need more resources.
Monitor virtual appliances
The Abiquo monitoring system displays VM metrics and the user can configure alerts to trigger actions if certain conditions are met within virtual appliances. If your virtual datacenter supports monitoring, but you don't see any metrics for your virtual appliance, you may need to edit your VMs and configure monitoring on the VM monitoring tab. See VM monitoring and metrics
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Screenshot: filtering metric statistics |
Create Alerts and Alarms
You can configure alerts, with their associated alarms, and action plans on the control tab. In order to create an alert, you will need to select or create alarms that will activate when VM metric thresholds are surpassed.
In order to create alarms that are not associated with alerts, edit your VMs and configure alarms for VM After you have started fetching metrics, you can now configure alarms on these metrics. See Manage cloud alarms.
Display VM alarms and alerts
To view a list of alerts and their associated alarms, open the Control tab.
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The muted alerts have an alert "speaker" symbol without sound waves. The alerts that are not muted have an alert symbol with sound waves.
Create alerts for VMs
Before you create an alert for the VMs in a virtual appliance, edit the VMs and do the following steps:
- Enable VM monitoring (see VM monitoring and metrics)
- Optionally create VM alarms (see Manage cloud alarms)
To create an alert for the VMs in a virtual appliance
- Open the virtual appliance Control tab
- Click the + add button
- Enter the alert details
Assign existing alarms to the alert, or create new alarms and then assign them to the alert.
Click Save
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Manage
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Manage alarms
To modify or delete an alarm associated with an alert:
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Privilege: Access alerts section, Manage alarms, Manage alerts |
- In the virtual appliance, open the Control tab and select the alert
- In the Alerts list, open the alert to list the alarms. Select the alarm
- To delete an alarm, click the delete button, and confirm
The platform will delete it from all the alerts that it is associated with - To modify the alarm, make your changes, and click Save
- To delete an alarm, click the delete button, and confirm
To edit or delete alarms that are not attached to alerts, open the VM and modify it on the Alarms tab; see Manage cloud alarms.
Manage scaling groups
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scaling groups
To configure an automatic response to changing demands for resources, you can scale out VMs, which is also called "horizontal autoscaling". To scale out, the platform clones the base VM and deploys the clones. To scale in, Abiquo the platform will delete clone machines VMs but it will just undeploy the base machineVM. Scaling operations are subject to all standard Abiquo platform constraints, such as privileges and allocation limits.
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Privilege: Manage scaling groups, Manage workflow for scaling groups |
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- Create a base VM, which can be deployed or undeployed
- Define a scaling group with rules for scaling the VM
- Create an action plan with scaling actions for the VM. Create triggers for the action plan, which are either monitoring alerts for virtual appliances or schedules for planned scaling
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Define a scaling group
Before you begin:
- Configure the base VM
- Ensure that you have enough resources in your virtual datacenter to deploy up to the maximum number of cloned VMs, especially IP addresses
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To open the scaling group and check its parameters, click the scaling group symbol in the top right-hand corner of the VM icon.
Triggering autoscaling
To trigger autoscaling operations, create an action plan with a scaling action for the VM with the scaling group, and then . Then create triggers to run the action plan. See Manage action plans and triggers. When scaling, the platform will search for a rule that is valid for the specific time range, or for a default rule. It will create or delete/undeploy the number of VMs in the rule, then wait for the cooldown period before accepting another scaling request.
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To scale in, Abiquo currently selects the VMs to delete or undeploy using first in, first out (FIFO). The platform deletes and undeploys VMs without requesting user confirmation when there are disks that are not stored in the Apps library (ISO configuration drive or additional hard disk).
Perform maintenance on the scaling group
Maintenance mode temporarily disables autoscaling and enables you to make changes to your VMs (deploy, undeploy, delete etc.) and edit the scaling group. Note that you cannot delete the base VM without deleting the scaling group. Also you cannot create alarms for cloned VMs that are part of a scaling group, because the scaling group alarms are in the base VM. When you leave maintenance mode, Abiquo will apply your modifications to the scaling group, e.g. adding new rules. Then Abiquo will adjust the number of VMs in the group to within the minimum and maximum size range.
- To put the scaling group in maintenance mode, click the "cog" maintenance button or trigger an action plan with the action "Scaling group: start maintenance mode"
- To leave maintenance mode, click the "cog" maintenance button again or trigger an action plan with the action "Scaling group: end maintenance mode".
Delete a scaling group
When you delete a scaling group, Abiquo will place all the VMs in the virtual appliance as regular VMs and the scaling group constraints will no longer exist. To delete a scaling group, first put it into maintenance mode, then click the delete button.
Manage action plans and triggers
To enable more control over cloud operations, users can create VM action plans to run tasks for VMs and Docker workloads.
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Privilege: Access action plans and triggers, Manage action plans and triggers |
VM action plans are for both private and public cloud and are an important autoscaling functionality on the platform. A VM can have multiple action plans
In the user interface, in the Virtual appliances view on the Control tab, users can manage Action plans and Triggers that run the action plans.
Create an action plan
Before you create an action plan, first create a VM. To create an action plan:
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button
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Put the actions in run order using the arrow buttons. Delete actions as required using the trash can button to the left of the action name.
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To run the action plan automatically, go to the Triggers tab and create an alert or schedule trigger.
Run an action plan now
When you have added some actions and saved the action plan, you can run the action plan immediately to test it. Edit the action plan and click the Execute action plan button, which is beside the + add button to create a new action.
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Abiquo recommends that you run an action plan manually to test it before you create a trigger to run it automatically.
Create a trigger
The platform supports two types of triggers to run action plans: Alerts and Schedules.
To run your action plan based on monitoring metrics, you can select an existing virtual appliance alert to trigger an Action plan. Click the + Add button and select the Alert. For details about creating an alert, see Manage Monitoring Alerts
To run your action plan automatically at selected dates and times, create a schedule trigger.
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Delete an action plan
If you delete an action plan, Abiquo will also delete the schedule associated with that action plan.
Related pages