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Using Abiquo you are able to manage several hypervisors from the same management interface. And you can also deploy the same virtual appliance in different hypervisors. This section provides a list of best practices to achieve maximum compatibility of virtual machine templates.

Best Practices for Hypervisor Compatibility

You can use any virtual disk as a template to deploy machines in Abiquo, if it is one of the supported formats. You

Introduction

To create a VM template, you can install an operating system on a virtual machine VM deployed directly on a hypervisor , and then distribute save the virtual disk file . This virtual disk file is called a virtual machine template. To ensure that your virtual machine template works perfectly, before you distribute it, you should follow these steps on the virtual machine you are generating the template from.

Disks

Use IDE system disks

Abiquo attaches virtual machine (or OVA) to load into Abiquo to share with your users.

As a guide, you can check many of the available settings for VM templates when you edit a VM template (especially, on the Advanced tab). See https://abiquo.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/doc/pages/311371311/Modify+a+VM+template#Edit-template-advanced-tab. Abiquo may also recognize some additional hardware from the OVF file (within an OVA). See OVF reference.

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UEFI boot

If your VM requires UEFI boot, then you must enable the option in Abiquo on the Advanced tab when you edit a template.

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Virtual disk formats

You can use any virtual disk in a supported format as a template to deploy VMs in Abiquo - see Template compatibility table.

VM Templates can be very large and flat formats can have a size equal to the total virtual disk capacity. To minimize download overhead when distributing a VM template, convert it to a compressed format like VMDK-streamOptimized or QCOW2-compressedSparse.

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VM disk controllers

Hard disks

By default, Abiquo attaches VM system disks to IDE controllers on all hypervisors, so Abiquo recommends that you create IDE system disks.

VMware hypervisors can deploy virtual machines VMs with SCSI system disks if this functionality is configured using Abiquo Configuration PropertiesSAS controllers or SCSI controllers for VM disks if you configure them using Abiquo configuration properties. See the VMware configuration page in the Admin Infrastructure Guide.

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When Abiquo deploys virtual machinesVMs with SCSI controllers, it adds uses the LSILogic SCSI controller for the iSCSI volumes used for virtual storage and persistent virtual machines.
LSILogic is the most common virtual SCSI controller used by hypervisors and Abiquo recommends this controller for your virtual machines.

Networks

Choose E1000 network cards as your virtual network adapters

Intel E1000 compatible network cards can be found in the list of available hardware of all the hypervisors Abiquo supports. If you want to run your virtual appliances in different hypervisors, use E1000.

Two new types of network card were introduced in Abiquo v2.0.

Configure networking to use DHCP

Abiquo works with an embedded DHCP server that controls the IP leases according to the specifications of the virtual machine in the interface. For the machines to receive their IP addresses correctly, the Machine Templates you deploy should have by default. Abiquo supports additional SCSI controllers. You can configure SCSI disk controllers using Abiquo configuration properties.

DVDs

Abiquo supports ISO disks and DVDs with the ISO disk feature. You can also attach these disks within Abiquo when you edit a VM template.

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VM Networks

Virtual network adapters

By default Abiquo uses Intel E1000 network drivers which are highly compatible with all systems. Abiquo also supports PCNet32 and VMXNET3 drivers on VMware, and VIRTIO drivers on KVM.

Configure networking to use DHCP

Select dynamically-assigned IP addresses in their your default configuration. Otherwise they will be receiving the same static IP the machine had while the template was being generated, leading to possible conflicts or, most likely, out of range addresses.VM configuration to ensure that your VMs all receive different IP addresses!

Erase MAC addresses from network scripts

Some operating systems store the , such as Red-Hat, store your VM’s MAC addresses in their network initialization scripts. This happens, for example, in Red-Hat-based Linux systems such as Fedora and CentOS. This is not correct: when a template is deployed to create a virtual machine, a new MAC address is assigned but the content of the network scripts is always the same, and if both the current MAC and the one specified in the script do not match, the network script will fail, leaving the network interface down. To ensure this does not happen, we need to Abiquo assigns a new MAC when you deploy a VM from a template, but an old network script with an old MAC will fail and the VM network will not come up.

To ensure VMs will deploy correctly with a working network, erase all trace of physical addresses in the network scripts.

Virtual Disk File Formats

Use VMDK monolithic flat to build your template

VMDK monolithic flat format can be used in several hypervisors without any conversion. If access to the template file is local, this is the best format to use.

Distribute templates in a compressed format

Virtual Machine Templates can be very large and flat formats can have a size equal to the total virtual disk capacity. To minimize download overhead when distributing a virtual machine template from a remote template repository, convert it to a compressed format like VMDK-streamOptimized or QCOW2-compressedSparse.

Other Compatible Hardware Devices

For information about hardware devices that are compatible with Abiquo, please see OVF Reference.

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