Hardware profiles

Hardware profiles are a convenient way of displaying CPU and RAM values that enable you to simplify the configuration of VMs for your users. They also enable you to control available hardware configurations and to recommend suitable hardware configurations for VM templates. And you can restrict users to a set of recommended configurations for a template.

• For public clouds with provider hardware profiles, you can synchronize and manage the provider's profiles in Abiquo. 
• For private cloud datacenters and public clouds without native hardware profiles, you can create and fully manage hardware profiles in Abiquo. 
• Some cloud providers may offer both hardware profiles and CPU and RAM.

For a cloud and tenant with hardware profiles enabled, when a user is creating a VM, the user must select a hardware profile. 

Synchronize hardware profiles with a provider

In public cloud providers with hardware profiles, when you create a public cloud region and add credentials for an enterprise, Abiquo will automatically retrieve the hardware profiles for the public cloud region.

By default, for each enterprise with credentials, the hardware profiles mode is enabled. By default, all hardware profiles are available to all enterprises. 

Create a hardware profile

You can create Abiquo hardware profiles in private cloud datacenters and for public clouds that do not have provider hardware profiles.

To create a hardware profile, open the datacenter or public cloud region to the Hardware profiles page, and click the + add button, and enter the details of the hardware profile.

Set prices for hardware profiles

Set prices for hardware profiles in pricing view on the Resources tab. See Pricing View#Hardware profiles

Enable users to work with hardware profiles

After you have prepared hardware profiles, enable users work with them, as follows:

1. Enable hardware profiles for your tenants and select allowed hardware profiles.  Manage Enterprises#Allowtenantstousehardwareprofiles 
   
   • This section also describes how to disable hardware profiles for a tenant
2. Configure hardware profiles for VM templates. See Modify a VM template

Automatic management of hardware profiles

The platform will automatically manage hardware profiles as follows:

• Provider hardware profiles
  
  • If you synchronize a public cloud region and a VM has a hardware profile that is not allowed for the enterprise, the platform will automatically allow the hardware profile
  • For AWS, Abiquo recommends hardware profiles based on information supplied by AWS in the following table, which was loaded into the platform at the time this feature was developed:  http://aws.amazon.com/amazon-linux-ami/instance-type-matrix/
  • If the provider does not support CPU and RAM as well as hardware profiles, and if there is no hardware profile that matches the CPU and RAM values, the platform cannot create a hardware profile, so the user will have to select another one
• Abiquo hardware profiles
  
  • If a tenant enterprise already has VMs deployed when you enable hardware profiles, the platform will try to assign existing hardware profiles. If an existing profile is inactive, the platform will activate this profile and assign it. Otherwise, the platform will create a new hardware profile named ABQ_HP_{cpu}_{ram}_ID.
  • If you capture a VM, the platform will behave as for VMs that were already deployed when you enabled hardware profiles.
• VApp specs
• When you create a VApp spec, the platform records the CPU and RAM, but not a specific hardware profile. When you create a virtual appliance from a spec, The platform creates a VM and assigns an appropriate hardware profile.

Prevent users from working with a hardware profile

Related pages

• Control access to hardware profiles at a tenant level:  Manage Enterprises#Allowtenantstousehardwareprofiles. 
• Configure hardware profiles for VM templates:  See Modify a VM Template
• Configure pricing for hardware profiles: Pricing View#Hardware profiles
• Configure VMs using hardware profiles: VM general information