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This document is part of the Abiquo walkthrough and it describes virtual datacenters.
The previous page in the walkthrough is Infrastructure and the next page is Catalogue

Each virtual datacenter (VDC) is a separate cloud environment in a datacenter or public cloud region. Abiquo users will consume their cloud resources and provision new virtual environments in the VDCs that belong to their tenant. VDCs provide an abstraction layer so the cloud user is removed as far as possible from the physical infrastructure. So the cloud user does not need to manage the underlying technology and can simply receive the service that is defined in their Service Level Agreement.

For each tenant, you can create multiple VDCs, but each VDC uses only one hypervisor or provider. To create different tiers of service or different SLAs for private cloud users, you can create VDCs with different hypervisors and cloud providers. For example, you may run a development environment on less expensive hardware with a free hypervisor such as KVM, whereas you may run a production application on VMware.

In public cloud, Abiquo works with "VDC-like" entities such as Amazon VPCs, Azure Virtual Networks, and vCloud Director vApps. In clouds that do not have a "VDC-like" entity, such as Google Cloud, Abiquo creates logical VDCs. For example, see https://abiquo.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/doc/pages/311371413/AWS+integration#How-Abiquo-creates-a-virtual-private-cloud

Virtual appliances contain groups of VMs in virtual datacentersImage RemovedVirtual appliances contain groups of VMs in virtual datacentersImage Added

Admins can define allocation limits to restrict resources available to cloud users in the VDC. These allocation limits complement the limits set by cloud operators for the tenant. When users reach the soft limit, the platform can display a warning message. When users reach the hard limit, the platform will block their action so they cannot obtain any more resources.

Within the VDC, cloud users can take advantage of self service. For example, they can create their own private networks and storage. Users create their applications within virtual appliances(VApps), which are like folders where cloud users can create groups of VMs using the templates from the catalogue.

To create new VMs, the cloud user simply clicks the Create virtual machine button and selects the required templates. 

Select a software template to create a VM

The cloud user then configures that VM to meet their needs. For example, configuring CPU and memory, and adding additional network interfaces or storage. When the configuration is complete, the cloud user deploys the VM, which launches the VMs to the hypervisor or public cloud provider. In private cloud, Abiquo copies the VM disks and configuration from the catalogue (NFS share within the datacenter) to a hypervisor datastore.
 
When the platform has deployed the VM, the cloud user can control it, for example, they can Start/Stop/Reset an individual VM through the Abiquo UI. They can also launch a console for remote access to the VM and perform any other configuration or administration tasks that may be required for their application.

Cloud users can create firewall policies, which are security groups or classic firewalls, in public cloud providers that support them, such as AWS, Azure, and vCloud Director, as well as in private cloud with VMware and NSX-T.

Abiquo users can create load balancers in public cloud providers that support them, such as AWS, ARM, vCloud, and VMware with NSX-T. Abiquo has a consistent interface for load balancers that incorporates different provider functionality. 

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A virtual datacenter provides an abstraction of the same resources as a physical datacenter (such as compute, network infrastructure, storage, backup, security, etc) with the added advantages of cloud computing:

  • Virtualization

  • Pay-as-you-go billing

  • Quick scalability

  • Technology and hardware abstraction.

A virtual datacenter offers the classical data center infrastructure as a service, so users can run their applications more economically and with greater flexibility.