Introduction
As part of the Guest setup feature, Abiquo supports Configuration drive feature in private cloud datacenters for automating first boot configuration.
Supported hypervisors:
- ESXi
- Hyper-V
- XenServer
- KVM
- Oracle VM
What is Configuration drive
The Configuration drive feature enables administrators to automate the configuration of a virtual machine at first boot by creating an ISO disk with user data files. Then Cloud-init or a similar system can configure the virtual machine from the user data. The Configuration drive feature can be used on VMs with private network or no network connectivity, because the VM pulls its own configuration from the ISO and there is no need for an external process to connect to the VM to configure it.
Configuration drive in Abiquo
In order to use the Configuration drive feature, users must first obtain or create compatible templates, such as templates that will run cloud-init services or cloudbase-init services (for Windows). When creating a virtual machine, the user can enter a configuration definition for cloud-init or other system on the Abiquo virtual machine Bootstrap script tab. The user can additionally enter keys and/or values on the Variables tab, either new keys or keys defined in the VM template. This information is stored in the Abiquo virtual machine metadata, and can also be managed using the Abiquo API.
Abiquo places the Bootstrap script content in a user_data file and the variables in a vm-variables.rc file. Abiquo also creates Configuration drive meta_data.json file. For example, Abiquo supplies the virtual machine’s unique identifier to configure the default virtual machine hostname. However, for example, the user can override the hostname in the Bootstrap script. Abiquo can also add the SSH public key, if the user has one. And if there is no DHCP service in the datacenter, Abiquo will inject the network configuration.
When the user deploys the virtual machine, Abiquo copies and uploads the configuration data to the hypervisor and attaches an ISO disk with this data to the VM. The ISO disk will count towards the limit of a maximum of 4 IDE drives per virtual machine. The ISO disk is not assigned to a datastore tier. At first boot, cloud-init configures the virtual machine.
As part of this feature, the virtual machine's Bootstrap script tab is now available in private cloud for Configuration drive use only. Configuration drive is hypervisor agnostic and support for the bootstrap script depends on the configuration of cloud-init or another system on the virtual machine template.