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Previous page: Virtual Datacenter Statistics

Next page: Users

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Info

This document is part of the Abiquo walkthrough and it describes the Catalogue.
The previous page in the walkthrough is Virtual datacenters and the next page is Tenants and users.

The Catalogue is where the Admin will make it easy for the cloud users to use work with the infrastructure that they are providing. This is where  In the catalogue, the Admin will provide the VM templates for creating VMs and blueprints for creating virtual appliance (VApp) configurations, and the Admin can configure services for XaaS.  

In each private cloud datacenter, the Admin should configure an Apps Library the catalogue based on an NFS Repository. Then Admins can upload templates as OVAs, template disks, or ISO disks, for example. The Apps library catalogue in public cloud for templates is a cache of template details with links to the original provider templates.

For Service Providers the Apps Library catalogue enables the provider to offer appliances and applications to their customer. For Enterprises the Apps Library catalogue provides a central, controlled image repository so that only approved images can be deployed onto the infrastructure.

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titleClick here to show/hide the task: Download sample templates

Abiquo supplies sample templates in a Remote Repository hosted on Amazon S3. Download some of these templates for testing.

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Note that by default the Cloud Admin has the privilege to Manage repository (to add and delete remote repositories) and Admins have access to the Apps library and the privilege to Download VM templates from remote repository.

The Cloud Admin can upload VM templates from the local filesystem and may also allow Enterprise Admins to upload their own templates to the Apps Library for Catalogue for their users. If the enterprise is a reseller, the Cloud Admin can allow them to share templates with their tenants. 

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titleClick here to show/hide the task: Upload a custom VM template

To upload a custom VM template:

  1. On the Apps Library Tab select the data center
  2. Click the + Add button and select the option to Create from OVA
  3. Select the OVA file. Abiquo imports OVAs created in VMware. The OVA shoulld contain a single virtual system and the disk format should be compatible with Abiquo. See Template Compatibility Table
  4. After you upload the OVA, edit the template as required. On the Advanced tab, check that the Operating system is set correctly

The template will be uploaded to your Apps Library and can be used to deploy VMs within a virtual appliance.
Note: Your appliance manager must be correctly configured to allow disk uploads. Browser upload uses HTTP protocols and larger disk files may require a different process.

Users can create clones of their VM disks as instance templates. In private cloud, instances are stored with the

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main templates in the

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Screenshot: A template and clones of VM disks created from the template (instance templates)

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Catalogue.

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In private cloud datacenters, Cloud Admins can set allocation limits to ensure that no single enterprise uses all the repository space. The platform meters Repository usage and you can bill each tenant for it.

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In public cloud regions, the Apps library Catalogue enables you to filter and search for public cloud images. It also allows you to import the image details into the Abiquo public cloud region Apps libraryCatalogue, which is a cache of template definitions. Here you can modify the way that Abiquo will present the public cloud templates to your users and, for example, restrict the hardware profiles that users can work with. Users can easily find and deploy the approved templates cached in the Apps LibraryCatalogue. Users can also create instance templates to clone the disks of their VMs running in the public cloud region.

Screenshot: In public cloud the Apps library imports the details of templates from the provider and links to the provider's disk files.

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In both private and public cloud, Admins can also create application blueprints called virtual appliance specs by saving the configuration of a group of VMs to the Apps librarycatalogue. The user can then select to the blueprint to automatically create a new virtual appliance directly from the blueprint.Image Removed

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And Admins can create default service configurations for Abiquo XaaS, which supports many services out of the box including AWX, AWS RDS, AWS Route 53, and Azure MySQL database.

Abiquo XaaS will let you easily integrate any kind of service into Abiquo and then offer it directly to your customers.

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