The aim of this section is to list and describe, from a functional perspective, the different components that it will appear in the documentation
Concept | Description |
|---|---|
Apps library | The Apps library is also called the Appliance library or Application library. The Apps library is the centralized virtual machine template library. Users can deploy their own virtual machines on a self-service basis using the templates available to them in the Apps Library. Administrators can load virtual machine templates from local disks or remote repositories. They can also download templates from the repository to local disk. |
Base format | The platform's default format for a hypervisor. See Template compatibility table#Hypervisor Compatibility Table |
| Captured virtual machine | A virtual machine that was created outside of Abiquo and imported into Abiquo then captured. Abiquo can manage captured virtual machines in the same way as virtual machines created in Abiquo. See Import and capture virtual machines. |
Cloud | Datacenters that offer pay-as-you-go, scalable, and flexible virtual infrastructure (compute, network and storage) as a service to final users |
Datacenter | A group of physical machines on the same LAN (Local Area Network). These machines are usually located in the same place, and share a network and resources (e.g. electrical power) |
| Datacenter networks | Networks that are created at datacenter level: external, public and unmanaged networks. |
| Default network | Network that can be set for an enterprise (external, private) or virtual datacenter (public, external, private). |
| Deploy | The process of allocating, provisioning and powering on a virtual machine. |
Enterprise | On our multi-tenant platform, an enterprise is a cloud tenant. So an enterprise could be a third-party company, development group, company department, etc. that can access the same virtual infrastructure. |
Enterprise repository | Each enterprise has its own Apps Library where users can select virtual machine templates for self-service deployment. Templates in the enterprise repository can be public (globally shared with all users) or private (local to their enterprise's users only). |
Hard limit | The maximum amount of RAM, CPU and HD resources that are available to an enterprise or virtual datacenter. |
Hypervisor | A virtualization platform enabling the creation of different virtual machines on the same physical machine |
| Instance | A snapshot copy of selected disks of a virtual machine that is stored as an instance template in the Apps library. In private cloud an instance is stored with the original master template from which the virtual machine was deployed. A virtual machine deployed from an instance will use a copy of the original virtual machine template definition. |
| Managed networks | Virtual machine networks that receive their IP addresses from Abiquo, including: private, external and public networks. |
| Managed - virtual machine | A virtual machine that was created by the platform, or imported/captured by the platform because it was already running on a hypervisor that was added to the platform. In contrast, a virtual machine that has been retrieved but not imported or captured is not managed by the platform. |
Physical machine | A host or physical machine has a hypervisor running on it in order to provide a virtualization infrastructure |
| Reconfigure | To change the virtual machine configuration after deployment. You must power off a virtual machine in order to reconfigure it. Elements that can be changed during a reconfigure include: network interfaces and volumes. |
Soft limit | The point where the system alerts the user that they are near the absolute limit of a resource, called the hard limits. Soft limits < hard limits |
| Synchronized | When virtual machines are synchronized, the virtual machine states are the same in Abiquo and in the hypervisor. |
Template repository | A public or private repository of virtual machine templates. Descriptions and virtual machine disk files are served by HTTP. |
| Tenant | In Abiquo, cloud tenants are known as enterprises. |
| Undeploy | The process of destroying the virtual machine in the hypervisor and releasing resources on the platform. |
Users | Users of the platform are grouped into tenants, which may be organizations, departments, and so on. Each user has a role with its associated access privileges. |
| VApp spec | A VApp Spec (Virtual Appliance Spec) is a configuration blueprint saved from a virtual appliance that users can deploy. |
Virtual appliance | A group of Virtual Machines running in a Virtual Datacenter. The virtual appliance is like a folder that can contain a related set of virtual machines that are used to provide a service, for example, a web stack. At the virtual appliance level, you can deploy these virtual machines together, view their performance statistics, create anti-affinity layers for VM high availability, and so on. |
Virtual datacenter | A partitioned area of the cloud with a set of virtual resources that belongs to one tenant and may be controlled by the tenant administrator (limit resources, create volumes, obtain public IP addresses, etc). The virtual resources are available to administrators and users on a self-service basis. The virtual appliances in a virtual datacenter all use the same type of virtualization technology (hypervisor, public cloud provider) or Docker host. These Virtual Appliances are all in the same public cloud region or physical datacenter and rack. See Manage virtual datacenters |
| Virtual datacenter networks | Networks created at virtual datacenter level: private networks that are isolated within the virtual datacenter. |
Virtual Machine | A guest or virtual machine is an instance of a virtual image with network and storage configurations. On a hypervisor it can be understood as a virtual operating system instance or container. One Physical Machine with a Hypervisor installed can host various Virtual Machines. A Docker host can run various Docker containers. |
Virtual machine instance | A copy of a Virtual Machine from a cloud node to the repository. The modified template can be deployed in another Virtual Appliance |
Virtual machine template (also Virtual image in API) | A virtual machine template contains the disk files that the platform will use to create a virtual machine and the definition of the virtual machine. In public cloud, the platform only stores the virtual machine definition and it uses the disk files in the provider. |
| Virtual machine template definition | Description of the virtual machine and deployment requirements sent to the hypervisor to create the virtual machine. This includes: resources (CPU, RAM and HD) and hypervisor technology associated with the disk format (pending OVF normalization: Disks and Virtual System) |
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