AWS Integration

Introduction to Abiquo and AWS

In the AWS integration, Abiquo creates VPCs with NAT support with a public subnet, and allows virtual machines on different subnets to be connected to the same load balancer. Abiquo now supports the AWS gateway address as the first address in the network.

Abiquo now configures VPC networking Scenario 2 as described in the AWS documentation http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonVPC/latest/UserGuide/VPC_Scenario2.html. 
Under this configuration, users must attach Elastic IPs to virtual machines with a connection to the public subnet. And by default, virtual machines in private networks will have internet access through the public subnet. This is helpful for automation because a virtual machine can now connect to the internet to download its configuration, for example, using Chef, without an Elastic IP.

VPC and Subnet

When you create an Abiquo virtual datacenter in an AWS public datacenter, Abiquo creates a VPC of size /16 and a subnet of size /24 (or as defined by the user). The default CIDR for the VPC and the subnet is 192.168.0.0, which is the default private network in Abiquo. You can set a custom private network in Abiquo and this network will be used to create the VPC and subnet in Abiquo. You can create multiple Abiquo private networks in different availability zones in the same VPC.

AWS Reserves IP Addresses

AWS reserves five IP addresses in your private networks. It reserves the first four IP addresses and the last IP address of the VPC private connect network. These IP addresses are not displayed or used by Abiquo. Therefore the first available IP address in a network that is defined to start with address 0, will be address 5, and the gateway address will be address 1.

For example, in the default_private_network with network address 192.168.0.0, the following addresses would be reserved or used as the gateway.

Internet Access

Abiquo creates a route table that is equivalent to the AWS route table with the values of the Abiquo private network. You can use the AWS NAT instance for Internet access from the Abiquo virtual datacenter private network. You can acquire floating public IPs for your virtual datacenter and in AWS, these will be created as Elastic IPs with public network addresses. Note that AWS may charge for Elastic IPs when they are NOT in use, i.e. when they are not assigned to a virtual machine or when the virtual machine is not deployed in AWS. In Abiquo 4.0+, you must assign the Elastic IPs to virtual machines with connections to the Public subnet.

Security

By default Abiquo assigns instances to the default VPC security group. This means that by default, all outbound traffic from instances is allowed. Enterprise administrators should configure an Abiquo firewall. Abiquo will create an AWS Security group in the VPC when this firewall is assigned to a virtual datacenter. Users can synchronize their firewalls with AWS, which will import existing security groups. The most basic configuration is to allow SSH inbound traffic, for example, port 22, which will allow SSH connections to the machine through a public IP, NAT, or from a private IP within the virtual datacenter. See AWS Security Groups as Abiquo Firewalls.

Number of IP Addresses per VM

Abiquo supports multiple IP addresses in the AWS integration. You can synchronize existing virtual machines with multiple IP addresses and create multiple IP addresses through Abiquo, including multiple Elastic IPs. 

Abiquo supports the number of IP addresses supported by the AWS hardware profile (instance type). See http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/using-eni.html#AvailableIpPerENI

If the user adds multiple IPs in the same subnet, Abiquo adds them to the same elastic network interface. And if the IPs are in a different subnet, Abiquo adds them to a different elastic network interface. For information about Elastic Network Interfaces, see http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/using-eni.html

How Abiquo Creates a Virtual Private Cloud

AWS Features

AWS Synchronization

AWS Firewalls

See Manage Firewalls

AWS Load balancers

Abiquo supports AWS load balancers.

To configure the integration:

• Set Abiquo Configuration Properties#amazon for the healthy threshold of machines in AWS in the abiquo.properties file. 
• The Load balancer UI options can be configured in the client-config-custom.json file. See Configure Abiquo UI
• The specifications of the load balancer integration are described in the following table.

See Manage Load Balancers

Manage load balancers using the API

The following resources can be used to manage load balancers in the API:

There are also methods related to managing load balancers in the following resources: 

• VirtualDatacenterResource
• VirtualMachineResource