As a true hybrid cloud system, Abiquo manages private and public clouds through a single user interface. It enables cloud administrators to manage the complexity of dealing with resources in multiple private datacenters and public cloud regions, and to control their use by policies. Cloud Administrators deliver simplicity to cloud consumers by granting them resources and allowing self-service in the cloud. This way, administrators remain in control of the physical resources, and consumers are abstracted from the location of the resources.
Cloud resources are allocated to Abiquo enterprises, which are the basic cloud tenant. Enterprises consume the cloud resources through virtual datacenters (VDCs), which are logical units bound to a single Abiquo datacenter and virtualization backend. By using different technology stacks in each VDC, the Cloud Administrator can provide different service levels.
Policies can be applied to VDCs to impose resource allocation limits (controlling compute, network and storage resources) or define which users within an enterprise can use a particular VDC. Users take advantage of self-service by creating their own virtual appliances (VApps) within the VDCs. VApps are containers consisting of one or more virtual machines (VMs). The resources a consumer can use are controlled by the administrator using policy and privileges that can be grouped into roles. For example, privileges determine whether consumers can change CPU and memory resources for VMs or create additional storage volumes.
Simplicity is delivered through the Apps Library. The Apps library provides virtual machine templates to users to consume the cloud resources in the virtual datacenters. It also provides application blueprints for a group of virtual machines to make it easy for users to create new applications. Access to virtual machine templates and blueprints is controlled by resource scopes, which are tenant access control lists defined by cloud administrators. This enables the Abiquo platform to provide Software as a Service (SaaS) on top of Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). Enterprise administrators may upload their own images to the Apps Library, allowing them to bring their own software onto the Infrastructure platform.
The entire platform is controlled by policy that enables the cloud administrator to maintain control of the physical infrastructure whilst delivering controlled self-service to the consumers. Policy controls the amount of resources that are allocated to Enterprises and VDCs, where the resources are located, and how they can be used. Abiquo provides governance through dashboards in UI as well as reports showing how the infrastructure is being used and where virtual machines exist on the platform.
Finally all operations on the Abiquo platform are metered, meaning that all resources allocated or consumed are measured and tracked. This allows for accounting and billing of the cloud service usage. Pricing information enables charge-forward notifications to users of how much they are likely to be charged for the vApps they create through self-service.
Abiquo functional map
Abiquo offers the building blocks for a customized cloud service, with functionality delivered through the Abiquo UI and integration points. However, Abiquo depends on the cloud infrastructure and it is important to understand where Abiquo sits in the overall environment. Abiquo manages resources in public cloud and private datacenters, which may be distinct physical locations or logical groups of infrastructure within the same location.
The Abiquo Cloud Management platform itself consists of an Abiquo Server (providing central management) and a Remote Services Server for each Datacenter. The platform presents a number of services to the cloud consumers to provide cloud services, and enable the use of integration and automation solutions on top of them:
The Server manages the platform and delivers service as defined by cloud administrators
The API provides access to the platform functionality, allowing integration or automation
The Apps library provides VM templates to run on the platform and use its resources
The UI allows cloud consumers to use the platform through the Abiquo Server
Reporting, Accounting and Metering show how the platform is being used
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Introduction
Abiquo is a fully integrated multi-cloud management platform with a single cloud console for resource management, and cloud budget and cost control.
The Abiquo platform is a cloud-agnostic management layer that sits above your cloud infrastructure and cloud providers. Abiquo supports VMware, AWS, Azure, Google, Oracle, and more!
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Abiquo cloud architecture concepts
When you add Abiquo to your environment, it does not impact on any virtual resources that are already running. You can add your infrastructure and providers to Abiquo in a controlled way on your own timescales.
The Abiquo platform servers are an Abiquo API server for central management, a set of Abiquo Remote Services to manage each datacenter and public cloud region, and a Monitoring server to offer metrics on cloud resources. In production environments, you will usually also create a Services datanode cluster for your database and for the platform’s internal messaging and queueing services.
In private cloud, Abiquo will also use a Service catalogue disk folder on an NFS server to store software templates.
The Abiquo platform makes changes to your cloud resources from user actions and/or automations only. When Abiquo checks your infrastructure and providers, it updates its database but it doesn’t make any changes to your cloud resources. You can easily check who has done what in the Events view!
For a more detailed introduction to the Abiquo cloud architecture, see the Abiquo components section.
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Abiquo summary
The Abiquo platform is a true multi-cloud system that manages private data centers and public clouds through a single console, and enables you to offer your customers a single cloud bill and billing dashboard.
In addition to the core platform, Abiquo has the building blocks for your customized cloud service, using the Abiquo UI, REST API, and integration points
Abiquo let you manage resources in hybrid and multi-cloud environments, in an agent-free environment that supports progressive onboarding
Abiquo cloud users can easily obtain resources by self-service but always under the cloud policy and governance that you define
Abiquo's cost management and resource optimization system has billing dashboards with estimated bills, and budgets that can trigger automation
Abiquo provides inventory and classification with multi-cloud tags, the virtual resource inventory screens, as well as reports that show how infrastructure is used and where VMs exist on the platform
Abiquo meters all operations to measure and track all resources allocated or consumed. This lets you bill the usage of your cloud services
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Abiquo CMP features
Abiquo offers cloud boosting features that work across private and public clouds and provide a true multi-cloud experience. Abiquo's features are adapted to the cloud providers but function independently of them.
Abiquo fulfills the Gartner CMP functional requirements in the areas of cloud management, and the following sections describe the cloud management platform and its features.
Source: Gartner ®, “Solution Criteria for Cloud Management Tools”, Marco Meinardi, Alan Waite, Brian Adler, 20 August 2020. GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and is used herein with permission
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Abiquo features for managed services providers
The Abiquo platform has many built-in features to support managed service providers, which include the following.
White-label the UI per reseller with support for separate access URLs
Restrict user access to selected virtual datacenters
Create read-only access, and other overrides of user roles per provider or virtual datacenter
Let users outsource systems that will still run on their virtual resources and are included in their single cloud bill
Deliver datacenter services through restricted networks and reserved IP addresses
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Abiquo features for resource management
For cloud resource management, to help you more easily manage complex technology without using different portals, Abiquo offers the following features.
Simple, unified, provisioning, and orchestration that you can automate
Centralized multi-cloud inventory views for administrators and users
Multi-cloud tag management to help you find and manage inventory across the cloud and drive a FinOps culture with multi-cloud cost and usage, and billing dashboards
BaaS and DRaaS to directly offer your users local backup and disaster recovery without creating your own integrations, and automatically add services to the customer's bill!
Prepackaged application configurations as blueprints (specs) that users can select, customize, and launch in any cloud
Multi-cloud monitoring and observability with support for custom application metrics. Users can receive notifications and create automation based on monitoring data.
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Business features with multicloud budgets and cost control
For cloud budget and cost control, Abiquo has a clear centralized dashboard that displays all costs broken down by service and recommends how users can optimize their resources.
The billing dashboard helps make your cloud costs visible with estimated bills for all providers, and with multi-cloud budgets, you can easily apply spending limits for different providers, which can help to avoid stray resources that lead to giant bill surprises!
Abiquo is designed for business use, and it meets your identity, security, and compliance needs with features such as:
Single sign on support
Role based access control
Policy for all clouds
Under these controls, Abiquo service enablement can provide more or less self-service as required, and also support managed services and service automation.
Administrators can manage multiple accounts, roles, and policies across multiple clouds. You can easily create and add accounts under your partner account in public cloud, onboard cost and usage data, and create a single cloud bill for your users.
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Abiquo integrates with your business and cloud systems
Abiquo is a complete cloud platform out of the box, with dashboards, event logs, event streaming, and built-in and custom reports. Abiquo is also extensible by integration. You can integrate Abiquo with your business processes, DevOps, and other systems to create the right cloud to meet your business objectives. For example:
Configure and launch systems from an ITSM integration
Access ticketing systems through an ITSM integration
Automate your VM configurations with cloud-init, cloudbase-init, and guest tools
And with Abiquo’s XaaS feature, you can easily integrate PAAS and your own systems and services to create your unique multi-cloud platform. Abiquo has plugins available for you to easily offer Amazon RDS, Amazon Route 53, Microsoft Products, AWX, and more.
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Related pages
This page belongs to the Get started section
For a more detailed description of Abiquo cloud architecture and installation types, see Abiquo components
To try Abiquo in a PoC or other test environment, do these walkthroughs:
To try Abiquo from scratch, with no infrastructure in the platform, do Abiquo quick tutorial
For Abiquo manuals, see Abiquo cloud guides
For a full description of the platform and examples of administrator tasks, see Abiquo walkthrough
If you have a demo license, see Configure licenses
To get some sample images into your Service catalogue, see Add virtual machine templates to Abiquo
For guides to Abiquo features, see Abiquo features by version