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Introduction
This document describes how to install a basic Abiquo environment using the Abiquo OVAs.
This environment is called a Monolithic install of the Abiquo multi-cloud platform.
Required skills
Some essential system administration skills required for managing the cloud platform are as follows:
CentOS/RedHat Linux expertise for maintaining the Abiquo servers, which are Linux servers
Computer and network security expertise is required to configure and maintain the cloud platform
Advanced hypervisor knowledge including VM templates
Networking including design, switch configuration, VLAN and DHCP and/or SDN configuration
Storage including hypervisor datastores, NFS/CIFS and optional iSCSI storage
If you are testing Abiquo, you may not need all of these skills right away, but they are required to run a production environment.
Server components
Abiquo has the following key server components:
Abiquo Server (Cloud orchestrator, API, UI)
Remote Services (That do the work of managing the cloud, with one set per Abiquo DC)
Optional monitoring Server (Manage VM and platform metrics data)
These components can be installed in different installation profiles.
Installation profiles
There are three main ways to install Abiquo:
Monolithic server
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: for a small environment, also for labs and testing
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Distributed
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scalable: medium environment with separate components, suitable for advanced testing and production
Distributed HA cluster: for large, high performance environments
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This document describes how to install a Monolithic environment.
A monolithic environment means that you have a single server with the Abiquo Server and Remote Services. And an optional Monitoring server.
If you want to test with large templates and you want better performance, install the remote service that manages template conversions on a separate server.
Before you install, prepare an NFS folder and your networks.
Then install the Monolithic Server and the Monitoring Server from the OVA files.
(To get an idea of how all of this will look when you're done, see the diagram of the Monolithic environment below.)
For more details, see Abiquo components
NFS folder
The platform will store the catalog of VM templates in an NFS folder.
So make sure to prepare a folder with enough space to hold all your templates and a fast network connection.
The platform will automatically mount the NFS folder on remote services and hypervisors.
When you deploy a VM, the platform copies the template from the NFS to the hypervisor datastore.
The platform can also convert templates from one format to another (V2V).
If you are working with large templates and multiple formats, you may wish to install the remote service that manages this on a separate server.
Note the network address and folder name to enter during the Abiquo install process.
For more details, see VM repository folder
Networks
You will need to put the Abiquo Monolithic Servers and components on the same network, which we call the Management network.
The VM networks are a group, which we call the Service network. For these networks you will need the following:
A range of VLAN tags for your VMs to use in private networks.
Configure this in your network infrastructure and then enter the tags for each group of hypervisors when you configure your Abiquo Racks.
Abiquo will assign a tag from the pool when it deploys the first VM in a private network.VLAN tags of other networks in your infrastructure that users can work with:
Public networks (shared by all enterprises, users can purchase IPs)
External networks (any kind of IP address, one tenant only).
Don’t forget to connect your hypervisors to the Service network… :-)
To assign IP addresses to VMs, Abiquo has a default DHCP configuration, which you can use in an isolated test environment. A
biquo also offers dnsmasq.
For more details, see:
Network for specifications
Networking guide for Abiquo networking concepts
Networking for descriptions of the networks
Appliance requirements
The Abiquo OVAs require at least the following virtualized hardware for your test environment:
2 CPUs
8 GB RAM
64 GB HD
Monolithic server install parameters
Before you begin the install, make sure you know the values of the following parameters that you will need to enter during the install process.
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Parameter
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Description
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Friendly hostname
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The name the appliance will use internally. It is the entire FQDN the UI will have.
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Management IP address
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IP of the server’s NIC on the Management Network
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Management IP netmask
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Netmask of the Management network
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Default gateway
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Default gateway of the NIC on the Management network
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DNS server list
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IPs of DNS servers in a list, separate by spaces
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NTP server list
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Your servers will use these NTP servers to keep their clocks synchronized
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Appliance public FQDN
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Your users must be able to resolve this fully qualified domain name. It should be the same as the "Friendly hostname".
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Abiquo datacenter ID
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This is an internal value that Abiquo uses to identify each private cloud datacenter, so it just needs to be unique for each private cloud datacenter
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NFS template repository
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Host details and folder name of NFS folder for storing the VM template catalog
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Abiquo monitoring IP
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This is the IP that the monitoring server will have.
Tip: you can note these values on a copy of the Monolithic environment worksheet. For examples, see Monolithic environment worksheet sample.
Install a monolithic server from the OVA
Follow the steps at OVA deployment.
Monitoring server install from the OVA
The Abiquo monitoring appliance is optional. To deploy the Monitoring appliance, you will need to enter the following parameter.
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Parameter
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Description
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Friendly hostname
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The name the appliance will use internally. It is the entire FQDN the UI will have.
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Management IP address
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IP of the server’s NIC on the Management Network
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Management IP netmask
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Netmask of the Management network
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Default gateway
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Default gateway of the NIC on the Management network
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DNS server list
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IPs of DNS servers in a list, separate by spaces
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NTP server list
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Your servers will use these NTP servers to keep their clocks synchronized
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RabbitMQ IP
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The IP address where the rabbitmq runs. In monolithic environment it will be the IP address of the Monolithic server.
In distributed environment it will be the IP address of the Abiquo server.
Follow the steps at OVA deployment.
Prepare your hypervisors
Abiquo supports VMware vCenter with access at the host or cluster level.
Abiquo supports any kind of datastore that your hypervisor supports.
Your hypervisors will need to mount the NFS folder.
VM remote access is via WebMKS.
To work with vCenter clusters, see Add VMware vCenter clusters as servers.
For general configuration, see VMware.
Monolithic environment diagram
When you've completed the install, your environment should be like the one shown here.
For the connections to add to your firewalls, you will also find a table in the next section.
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Monolithic environment firewalls
This section lists the ports you will need to open on each server in your test environment.
Abiquo monolithic server
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Source
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Destination
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Input port
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Description
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Client
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Abiquo monolithic server
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TCP 80
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HTTP
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Client
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Abiquo monolithic server
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TCP 443
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HTTPS
To allow users to upload and download VM templates, you can allow an optional connection from users to this server (specifically the Appliance Manager Remote Service that handles this functionality).
Abiquo monitoring server
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Source
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Destination
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Input port
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Description
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Monolithic server
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Monitoring server
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TCP 36638
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Watchtower
NFS server
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Source
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Destination
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Input port
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Description
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Monolithic server, hypervisor
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NFS
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TCP/UDP 2049
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NFS
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Monolithic server, hypervisor
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NFS
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TCP/UDP 111
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RPC
Hypervisors
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Source
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Destination
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Input port
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Description
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Monolithic server
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vCenter or ESXi
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TCP 443
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Monolithic server
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Hyper-V
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TCP 135
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Monolithic server
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KVM
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TCP 8889
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Monolithic server
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Public cloud
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TCP 443
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Allow ICMP ICMP must be allowed between all components of the Abiquo platform, including hypervisors. |
Browser requirements
Abiquo UI requires a screen resolution of at least 1024 x 768 for productive work.
It is based on HTML5 so browsers must support these HTML5 features: Forms block, Drag and drop.
The Abiquo UI is optimized for use with Firefox and Chrome.
The cool infrastructure map uses Google Maps and the Google Maps Javascript v3 API. See How to Obtain and Install a Google Maps API Key.
Next steps
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For a quick introduction to the platform, do the Abiquo quick tutorial
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After that, to present the platform to others, try the Abiquo quick walkthrough of private cloud
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To read more details about the platform, see Get started
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For more complete user manuals, see Abiquo cloud guides
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For a test environment, Abiquo recommends a Distributed scalable environment.
To install a Distributed scalable environment, see Install a distributed scalable environment
Other install profiles:
To install a Monolithic environment, see Install a monolithic environment
To install a Distributed HA cluster, see Distributed HA cluster environment