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Cloud Administrators allocate resources to Abiquo enterprises, which are the basic cloud tenants. Enterprises consume the cloud resources through virtual datacenters (VDCs), which are logical units bound to a single Abiquo datacenter and virtualization backend, or public cloud provider. The Cloud Administrator can provide different service levels by using different technology stacks for different VDCs.
Administrators can apply policies to VDCs using allocation limits (controlling compute, network and storage) or defining the users within an enterprise who can work with each VDC. Users take advantage of self-service to create their own virtual appliances (VApps) within the VDCs. VApps are groups (like folders) with one or more virtual machines (VMs). Administrators can control user resources with policy, and privileges that are grouped into roles. For example, privileges determine if consumers can change CPU and memory for VMs, or create additional storage volumes.
The Apps library is the key to self-service is the Apps library, where Administrators provide VM templates to users, so they can consume the cloud resources in the VDCs. Administrators can also provide application blueprints for a group of VMs to make it easy for users to create new applications. Administrators control access to VM templates and blueprints using resource scopes, which are tenant access control lists. This enables the platform to provide Software as a Service (SaaS) on top of Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). Enterprise administrators may be allowed to upload their own images to the Apps Librarylibrary, thereby bringing their own software onto the Infrastructure platform.
In summary, the entire platform is controlled by policy that enables the cloud administrator Cloud Administrator to maintain control of the physical infrastructure and public cloud services, whilst delivering controlled self-service to the consumers. Policy controls the amount of resources that are allocated to Enterprises and VDCs, where the resources are located, and how they can be used. And Abiquo provides governance through dashboards in the UI, as well as reports showing how the infrastructure is being used and where VMs exist on the platform.
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