Page Comparison

To help you detect and address changing demand for resources, the virtual appliance has Monitoring and Control features, which include alerts with notifications, action plans for automation, and vertical and horizontal autoscaling. To configure monitoring and control, go to Virtual datacenters, select a virtual appliance and then select the Monitoring or Control tabs. Much of these features depend on the configuration of VM monitoring and metrics and VM Alarms, so you may like to set these up first. You should also create scaling groups for your individual VMs as described below.

Image Removed

...

Alarms

An alarm activates when a metric passes a certain threshold. If you imagine a dashboard for your metrics, alarms are like red lights that light up when conditions change, for example, when there is a problem. 

Alerts

Alerts enable you to configure notifications or actions for the VMs in a virtual appliance. Alerts are like a worker monitoring a group of alarms; when all the lights for the group are lit up, the alert is activated. Abiquo alerts can trigger action plans.

Action plans

A sequence of actions to perform on a virtual appliance. An action plan is run by a trigger.

Trigger

A trigger is an alert or a schedule that will run the action plan, for example, during times of increased demand. 

Scaling group

For horizontal autoscaling, create a scaling group for a VM with rules to define how the platform should scale it out. You can then include scaling operations in an action plan.

Vertical scaling

Vertical scaling means adding more resources to an existing VM, for example, boosting your CPU and or RAM capacity.

Horizontal scaling

Horizontal scaling means deploying more VMs when you need more resources. 

Monitor virtual appliances

The Abiquo monitoring system displays VM metrics and the user can configure alerts to trigger actions if certain conditions are met within virtual appliances. If your virtual datacenter supports monitoring, but you don't see any metrics for your virtual appliance, you may need to edit your VMs and configure monitoring on the VM monitoring tab. See VM monitoring and metrics

Then you can configure the display of metrics at the virtual appliance level.

To configure the refresh interval, select the Refresh data every checkbox and enter a number of minutes. Then choose the metrics you wish to display and filter by metric statistics.

Image Removed

Create Alerts and Alarms

You can configure alerts, with their associated alarms, and action plans on the control tab. In order to create an alert, you will need to select or create alarms that will activate when VM metric thresholds are surpassed. 

In order to create alarms that are not associated with alerts, edit your VMs and configure alarms for VM metrics. See VM Alarms. 

Display VM alarms and alerts

To view a list of alerts and their associated alarms, open the Control tab. 

The muted alerts have an alert "speaker" symbol without sound waves. The alerts that are not muted have an alert symbol with sound waves.

Image Removed

Create alerts for VMs

Before you create an alert for the VMs in a virtual appliance, edit the VMs and do the following steps:

1. Enable VM monitoring (see VM monitoring and metrics)
2. Optionally create VM alarms (see VM Alarms)

To create an alert for the VMs in a virtual appliance

1. Open the virtual appliance Control tab
2. Click the + add button
3. Enter the alert details

4. Assign existing alarms to the alert, or create new alarms and then assign them to the alert.

5. Click Save

If all alarms are activated, the alert will be activated. You can use the alert to trigger actions. See Manage action plans and triggers.

...

Manage alarms

To modify or delete an alarm associated with an alert:

1. In the virtual appliance, open the Control tab and select the alert
2. In the Alerts list, open the alert to list the alarms. Select the alarm
   
   • To delete an alarm, click the delete button, and confirm
     The platform will delete it from all the alerts that it is associated with
   • To modify the alarm, make your changes, and click Save

To edit or delete alarms that are not attached to alerts, open the VM and modify it on the Alarms tab; see VM Alarms.

Manage scaling groups

Horizontal scaling of VMs enables users to configure an automatic response to changing demands for resources. To scale out, the platform clones the base VM and deploys the clones. To scale in, Abiquo will delete clone machines but it will just undeploy the base machine. Scaling operations are subject to all standard Abiquo constraints, such as privileges and allocation limits.

To use autoscaling do these steps:

1. Create a base VM, which can be deployed or undeployed
2. Define a scaling group with rules for scaling the VM
3. Create an action plan with scaling actions for the VM. Create triggers for the action plan, which are either monitoring alerts for virtual appliances or schedules for planned scaling

...

Create a scaling group

Before you begin:

1. Configure the base VM
2. Ensure that you have enough resources in your virtual datacenter to deploy up to the maximum number of cloned VMs, especially IP addresses

To create a scaling group:

1. In virtual appliance view, select the VM, and from the menu on the VM icon, select the Create scaling group option
2. Enter the scaling parameters and rules
3. Click Save

...

When you save the scaling group, Abiquo will mark the VM icon with the scaling group symbol and display the scaling group name. If the minimum number of deployed VMs are not present and the scaling group is not in maintenance, Abiquo will create clones of the base machine and deploy them to reach the minimum size. The number in the bottom right-hand corner of the icon is the number of running VMs in the scaling group, including the base machine.

Image Removed

To open the scaling group and check its parameters, click the scaling group symbol in the top right-hand corner of the VM icon.

Triggering autoscaling

To trigger autoscaling operations, create an action plan for the VM with the scaling group, and then create triggers to run the action plan. See Manage action plans and triggers. When scaling, the platform will search for a rule that is valid for the specific time range, or for a default rule. It will create or delete/undeploy the number of VMs in the rule, then wait for the cooldown period before accepting another scaling request. 

To scale out, the platform does not deploy VMs that are undeployed in the scaling group. To clone the base VM, the platform will do the following:

1. Create disks using the following:
   
   1. Copies of content of disks from the VM template
   2. Empty disks or volumes for each additional disk used in the VM
   3. Disk controllers used in the VM
2. Apply ALL configuration used in the VM, for example:
   
   1. CPU and RAM
   2. Network connections of the same type (e.g. private network)
   3. Assignment of firewall policies and attachment to load balancers
   4. Chef recipes, backups, cloud-init, variables, and so on
   5. Metrics. The group of metrics from clone machines and the base machine (if it is deployed) can activate alarms in the base machine, even if it is not deployed
   6. Exception – Alarms: the scaling group has only one set of alarms in the base machine

To scale in,  Abiquo currently selects the VMs to delete or undeploy using first in, first out (FIFO). The platform deletes and undeploys VMs without requesting user confirmation when there are disks that are not stored in the Apps library (ISO configuration drive or additional hard disk). 

Perform maintenance on the scaling group

Maintenance mode temporarily disables autoscaling and enables you to make changes to your VMs (deploy, undeploy, delete etc.) and edit the scaling group. Note that you cannot delete the base VM without deleting the scaling group. Also you cannot create alarms for cloned VMs that are part of a scaling group, because the scaling group alarms are in the base VM. When you leave maintenance mode, Abiquo will apply your modifications to the scaling group, e.g. adding new rules. Then Abiquo will adjust the number of VMs in the group to within the minimum and maximum size range.

• To put the scaling group in maintenance mode, click the "cog" maintenance button or trigger an action plan with the action "Scaling group: start maintenance mode"
• To leave maintenance mode, click the "cog" maintenance button again or trigger an action plan with the action "Scaling group: end maintenance mode".

Delete a scaling group

When you delete a scaling group, Abiquo will place all the VMs in the virtual appliance as regular VMs and the scaling group constraints will no longer exist. To delete a scaling group, first put it into maintenance mode, then click the delete button.

Manage action plans and triggers

To enable more control over cloud operations, users can create VM action plans to run tasks for VMs and Docker workloads. 

VM action plans are for both private and public cloud and are an important autoscaling functionality on the platform. A VM can have mutliple action plans

In the user interface, in the Virtual appliances view on the Control tab, users can manage Action plans and Triggers that run the action plans.

Image Removed

Create an action plan

Before you create an action plan, first create a VM. To create an action plan:

1. Open the Control tab of the virtual appliance and click the + button 
2. Enter the action plan details
3. Add actions, by clicking the + Add button, selecting the action type from the pulldown list and entering the parameters as required. Consider the following constraints on actions
   
   1. Maintenance block: You can create one complete maintenance block (start maintenance, action(s), and stop maintenance) and the maintenance block cannot contain any scaling actions
   2. Scale in and/or scale out actions: You can only scale in and/or scale out at the end of the action plan but you can create the scaling action(s) in any order (e.g. scale in first, only scale in)
   3. Email actions: You can perform an email action at any time, including after scaling actions
   4. Platform contstraints: For example, to create an instance, the VM must be deployed and powered off 
   5. Hypervisor constraints: For example, when using hot reconfigure on ESXi, you cannot decrement CPU or RAM 

Put the actions in run order using the arrow buttons. Delete actions as required using the trash can button to the left of the action name.

...

To run the action plan automatically, go to the Triggers tab and create an alert or schedule trigger. 

Run an action plan now

When you have added some actions and saved the action plan, you can run the action plan immediately to test it. Edit the action plan and click the Execute action plan button, which is beside the + add button to create a new action. 

Abiquo recommends that you run an action plan manually to test it before you create a trigger to run it automatically.

Create a trigger

The platform supports two types of triggers to run action plans: Alerts and Schedules. 

Image Removed

To run your action plan based on monitoring metrics, you can select an existing virtual appliance alert to trigger an Action plan. Click the + Add button and select the Alert. For details about creating an alert, see Manage Monitoring Alerts

To run your action plan automatically at selected dates and times, create a schedule trigger.

...

Delete an action plan

If you delete an action plan, Abiquo will also delete the schedule associated with that action plan. 

Related pages

...

• VM monitoring and metrics
• VM Alarms

...

This page contains links to the pages about monitoring and scaling VMs.

• Manage scaling groups

• Manage scaling groups advanced

• VM monitoring and metrics

• Manage cloud alarms  

• Infrastructure alarms

• Control view

• Configure VM monitoring and metrics