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Introduction
Abiquo is a fully integrated
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multi-cloud management platform with a single cloud console
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for resource management, and cloud budget and cost control.
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Screenshot: Abiquo enables you to manage and inventory cloud resources
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The
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Abiquo is cloud agnostic and it supports popular cloud providers to offer a consistent user experience. Abiquo's own cloud boosting features sit above the provider clouds and offer a true multicloud experience that is beyond cloud native. These features are adapted to the underlying clouds but do not depend on them, so you are not locked in to any specific cloud provider. Moreover your users do not need to learn the details of every single provider, and your systems administrators do not need to spend as much time moving between cloud consoles.
Out of the box, Abiquo is a very complete cloud management platform but it is also designed from the ground up to be extensible by integration, so you can build PAAS, managed services, and more. You can decide how much automation you require. For example, your system administrators may create an integration to launch systems from within your ITSM system, but users may work with their virtual resources using the Abiquo UI. Even the Abiquo UI can support integration and extensions with JavaScript.
Abiquo is designed for business use with features such as RBAC, SSO, cost and usage dashboards and reports, event log and audit reports, custom reports, and so on. Abiquo integrates with your business processes, DevOps, and systems to create the right cloud to meet your business objectives. The Abiquo workflow feature enables you to easily integrate with an approvals system or a CMDB.
Abiquo cloud services
The Abiquo cloud management services consist of an Abiquo API Server (providing central management) and a set of Abiquo Remote Services for each datacenter, and for public cloud regions.
The platform offers a number of cloud services, and you can add integration and automation solutions too.
For example, here are some of the core services:
The Server manages the platform and delivers service as defined by cloud administrators
The REST API provides access to the platform functionality, allowing integration or automation
The self-service Apps library (Service catalogue and Image library) provides VM templates and blueprints to run on the platform and use its resources
The UI gives cloud consumers a consistent user experience across public cloud providers and private cloud
Dashboards, Reporting, Accounting, and Metering record and display platform usage. They also enable you to send each tenant a single cloud bill for their multicloud services!
In addition, you can use enhancement packs to work with services such as:
- Backup as a Service using popular backup technology such as Veeam, Networker, and Rubrik
- Disaster Recovery as a Service using Zerto
Functional map
Here is a basic functional map of Abiquo.
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Abiquo adds an unintrusive management layer to the existing cloud infrastructure and providers. Abiquo enables users to manage their virtual resources, and adding Abiquo to your environment does not impact on any virtual resources that are already running. The Cloud Administrators can add their providers and infrastructure to Abiquo in a controlled way on their own timescales. |
Abiquo provisions virtual resources and much more. For example, you can:
- Manage costs with budgets, pricing estimates, dashboards displaying usage and bills, and allocation limits. Synchronize price books from Amazon and Azure. Control your cloud costs.
- Automatically scale out or in to adjust your workloads (and cloud bills) to your application requirements on any cloud. Save on cloud costs.
- Manage automation on any cloud, using guest tools or the cloud-init standard. Save system administrator time.
- Automate your infrastructure using Abiquo integrations with Terraform and Chef, or using standard tools such as Ansible and Puppet. Save system administrator time.
- Create your own integrations using the complete Abiquo REST API, with Java and Python libraries. Use the Java stream client to follow activity on the platform.
Out of the box, Abiquo is a very complete cloud management, and cloud budget and cost control platform.
Abiquo also offers the building blocks for a customized cloud service, so you can use the optional features that best match your business goals.
With Abiquo you really can customize your cloud platform to implement your business objectives.
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Abiquo doesn't do anything to virtual resources without user actions or automation. Abiquo will update its own information when it checks and synchronizes but it doesn't delete anything. Abiquo doesn't power off or undeploy VMs. So if something has happened to your VM, you can check in the events view and you will probably find out that someone else in the team has done something to your VM! |
Supported providers
Abiquo supports the most popular hypervisors and public cloud providers including:
- VMware vCenter clusters and hosts
- VMware vCloud Director
- Amazon AWS
- Microsoft Azure
- Google Cloud Platform
- Oracle Cloud Infrastructure
Extensible platform example
For example, to build Managed Services, you can take advantage of advanced features such as:
- Restriction of access to virtual datacenters within tenants
- Easy launch of readymade apps using blueprints
- Delivery of datacenter services with restricted networks and IP addresses
- Access control using RBAC with granular privileges and custom role override (e.g. read only access)
- Single sign on integrations
- Management of partner accounts in public cloud
- Whitelabelling per customer, or even per reseller with custom URLs
Integrations
Abiquo customers use the following kinds of business process, DevOps, and systems integrations.
- Configure and launch systems using an ITSM integration
- Create configuration or update a CMDB by holding VM operations and sending a webhook to a workflow integration
- Detailed private cloud billing with service breakdown based on complete usage metering
- Hierarchical access control to dashboard display of public cloud cost and usage data from the cloud provider
- Estimated bill for public cloud and multicloud budget control with automation
- Ticketing system access through an ITSM integration
- Automation of virtual infrastructure with cloud-init
Cloud boosting features
Abiquo offers many multicloud features that sit above the cloud providers and infrastructure. These include the following.
- Multicloud cost control with
- User customizable billing dashboard with estimated bills
- Budgets with notifications and remediation actions
- Multicloud management with
- Ready to launch blueprints
- Agentless monitoring with alerts, notifications, and actions
- Automation that can also notify and send webhooks
- Workload driven autoscaling
Related pages
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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